Piranha 2 - DVD

Film: It's been a year since prehistoric piranhas feasted on the party teens at Lake Victoria. The danger seems to have been averted by now, but the region around the town of Merkin has suffered noticeably from the massacre. The lake is contaminated, bathers have long since disappeared and tourists have long since stopped coming to the area. When young marine biology student Maddy (Danielle Panabaker) returns to Merkin, she's amazed to discover that her sleazy stiff father Chet (David Koechner) has found a way to make money in the midst of this economic wasteland after all: he's simply expanded the family water park to include an adults-only area where sexy strippers flaunt their ample curves to guests. Maddy is mightily disgusted by Chet's business idea, but can't do anything about it since he owns a majority stake in the water park. But Chet's penchant for voluptuous cup sizes are soon the least of Maddy's problems, because of all things, a few uninvited guests have invited themselves to the park for the grand opening party: some of the piranhas that survived their supposed extinction. And they're mighty hungry and extremely nasty.

After Alexandre Aja's 2010 remake of the biting fish classic Piranha successfully mixed unrestrained bloody horror with trashy comedy and a very revealing meat show, recouping many times its production costs, a sequel was quickly a done deal. This was left in the hands of John Gulager, who has already proven with the Feast films that he can mix horror and absurdities into an entertaining whole. In doing so, Gulager hardly cares about crossing the boundaries of good taste. While some of the gags in Aja's film were already borderline, Gulager makes it clear right from the start where his humorous journey is headed when he has his surviving piranhas farted out by a dead cow. If you want to have fun with Piranha 2, you have to be prepared for exactly such a level of humor. If you do, there's a whole lot to laugh at here.

Once again, the second time around, the piranhas get to feast on various extremities, make well-built ladies shriek and run away in figure-conscious slow motion, and of course ensure the spilling of gallons of fake blood in the process. While Aja played cleverly with clichés and their unrestrained exaggeration in his film, the biting action here is much simpler and more directly staged. There is as little emphasis on great acting as there is on sophisticated dialogues. That's not a bad thing, but a little more originality and finesse would have done the movie some good. As it is, it rather seems as if Gulager directed his film with a sledgehammer. It's fun if you go for it, but still falls far short of the quality of its equally trashy predecessor.

Various guest appearances, for example by Gary Busey, Christopher Lloyd or an extremely self-deprecating David Hasselhoff, keep the film's fun factor at a pleasant level. But even they can't hide the fact that the story of this sequel doesn't offer much. And so it's not surprising that the film is over after a little more than 65 minutes. It follows a with outtakes overlong blown up credits, which extends the total length to 79 minutes. Who does not expect a lot of level in these 65 minutes and would rather get served what the original title of the film, Piranha 3DD, promises, which can take this sequel quite to mind.

Image + Sound: The clean image looks a bit flat in the 2D version, which may be due to the somewhat weakly mixed contrasts. Otherwise, the visuals please with very vibrant colours and decent overall sharpness. The sound is convincing with powerful bass and nice surround sounds like the heavy splashing of water in the pools of the water park. The dialogue, on the other hand, seems a bit too restrained in the mix, though this is a bit less of a negative on the DTS track than the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix. In the end, it's still enough for a satisfied: good!

Extras: The DVD of the horror comedy has some nice extras to offer. It starts off with an audio commentary (unfortunately not subtitled) by director John Gulager, producer Joel Soisson and co-writer Marcus Dunstan. It's a very amusing, self-deprecating and revealing commentary, covering, among other things, scenes that didn't make it into the finished film and, sadly, didn't make it onto the DVD.

Continues with three short and rather unnecessary cut scenes (approx. 3 min.), as well as three video segments (approx. 6 min.) created for the viral marketing of the film: Wet and Wild with David Koechner, The Hofftastic World of David Hasselhof, and Busey Bloopers. Not really spectacular, but a few small amusing moments can definitely still be discovered here. In addition, there is a rather short Making of with 8 minutes, which offers a rather standard look behind the scenes.

Nine minutes of uncommented B-Roll footage, twelve minutes of interviews with Danielle Panabaker, David Hasselhoff, Gary Busey and John Gulager, a not really funny short film with John McEnroe (approx. 4 min.), as well as the trailer for the film and other titles of the provider round off the decent bonus package.

Conclusion: Piranha 2 is pure horror trash. The over-the-top comedy doesn't even try to be anything else, either. If you're up for it, you'll be properly entertained, even if the sequel can't hold a candle to Alexandre Aja's film at any point. The 2D-DVD version offers the film in good technical realization and also offers a decent bonus package, which, however, is offered without subtitles. Viewers with a good knowledge of English should at least listen to the good audio commentary. If you like uninhibitedly silly and tasteless fish horror, you can definitely risk a look here

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp