Piranha Part Two: The Spawning

Scott Hardie: “It sucked.”

Sometimes it takes a vacuous sequel to highlight what few things worked in the lousy original. This wretched foreign cash-in, which re-used none of the original's cast or crew, plainly demonstrates the limitations of the low-budget horror movie, and yet none of it makes sense. They had the budget to blow up a helicopter, yet not to produce flying fish that looked even remotely plausible? The fish attacks look exactly like what they are: Bad actors, smeared with red dye, screaming while shaking around with rubber fish props. It's a sad little waste of time, without a flicker of entertainment value, even in watching Lance Henriksen's no-nonsense cop. It's tempting to view this as James Cameron's debut film – it opens with a scuba-diving couple having sex inside a sunken ship, which actually turned out to be the perfect way to consummate Cameron's career, and the female protagonist to be one tough survivor in the final sequence – but the truth is, Cameron directed very little of this project and had nothing to do with the final cut; his name is only attached out of contractual obligation. In other words, what might seem to be the sole reason to watch this dark, depressing, nasty little bore, in fact does not exist.

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