zetes Review of Mega Piranha

Mega Piranha (2010 TV Movie)

Hits the perfect so-bad-it's-good sweet spot

[7/10 · 31 May 2010]

I actually caught about half of this a month or so ago, but this time I watched the whole thing. It's an Asylum movie, and, if you don't know what that means, you're probably lucky. The Asylum is a company that makes direct-to-video or TV movies that are generally cheap knockoffs of other famous movies (they made Transmorphers, for example, when Transformers came out). They are cheap as Hell, usually contain the worst CGI imaginable, as well as the worst actors to grace this Earth. Lately, they've made a couple of non-knockoffs. Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus was an internet sensation last year, though it probably didn't get watched half as much as it got referenced. Mega Piranha is their follow-up to that film, and it was made for the Sy-Fy network (yes, for those who don't know, Sci-Fi changed their name to Sy-Fy a while back, presumably because they don't want to be associated with actual science nowadays). I must say, Mega Piranha really hits that sweet spot: it's utterly terrible, but always in an amusing way. It's never boring, and it winks just enough at the audience where it doesn't become annoying. It is a perfect example of a so-bad-it's-good movie, and deserves to be on the shelf next to Plan 9 from Outer Space. It stars Paul Logan (a veteran of Asylum with such titles to his name as Komodo vs. Cobra, Cannibal Tattoo and Aliens on Crack (the latter sadly not yet released)) as a military man sent down to Venezuela to convince their military that a sunken ship was not caused by American weapons. Of course, it was caused by piranhas which were created by American scientists. Hey, they were only trying to make fish bigger, so they could feed more people! Among the scientists is former pop star Tiffany (whom you may remember covering the Tommy James classic "I Think We're Alone Now"), and she's not looking too great (certainly she's worse off than Debbie Gibson, who starred in Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus). Logan, Tiffany and the other scientists then try to stop the piranhas, while the Venezuelan military attempts to stop them. Oh, and Barry Williams (aka Greg Brady from The Brady Bunch) is Logan's commander. The piranhas are doubling in size every 36 hours, and in less than a week they will be in the Mississippi. Fortunately, they can't swim in salt water (wait a second...), but then, that soon proves false for no reason in particular (so there's no problem for them to get to the Mississippi, except for maybe they'll be too big then). The plot makes less and less sense as it goes on, but it's a ball to see the horribly rendered fish committing suicide in order to eat people off the beach. When they can't find people, they just jump face-first into a building and start chowing down. The best thing about this movie is the ending: it ends with the heroes celebrating victory, but any toddler watching could probably point out that they have only succeeded in killing one of the billion or so piranha. A hoot for anyone who loves bad movies.