Piranha 3-D
Dimension Films | Release Date: August 20, 2010 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
53
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 20 Critic Reviews
Positive:
8
Mixed:
10
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Tampa Bay TimesSteve Persall
Hands down and body parts floating, the most irresistibly sick movie in years is Piranha 3D, which should be retitled Piranha 3D, Double-D and C for all the topless cuties director Alexandre Aja feeds the fish and audience. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerTirdad Derakhshani
What really matters is that the film works. It's a genuinely suspenseful, no-holds-barred masterpiece of sex 'n' horror exploitation. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua Rothkopf
Roger Corman could only dream of producing a movie this stupefyingly gory and loaded with exposed flesh, making the updated Piranha that most unlikely of remakes-an improvement. Read full review
75
MovielineStephanie Zacharek
There's a degree of gruff integrity at work for at least two-thirds of Alexandre Aja's grindhouse piranhapalooza Piranha 3D, in which a megaschool of man-eating fish thought to be extinct burst through an underwater fissure to terrorize a normally placid lake in Arizona. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterMichael Rechtshaffen
A pitch-perfect, guilty-pleasure serving of late-summer schlock that handily nails the tongue-in-cheek spirit of the Roger Corman original. Read full review
70
Village VoiceChuck Wilson
Irredeemable, and yet, the movie, written by Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg, is too funny and the filmmaking too self-aware to be truly offensive. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
I call Piranha 3D ''exploitation,'' rather than a quality scare movie, because it serves up well-timed gross-outs instead of genuine suspense and because the movie has no pretense of providing character, plot, acting, or dialogue that's anything more than boilerplate. Read full review
63
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Piranha 3D ends the summer on a note of shamelessly entertaining B movie bottomfeeding. Read full review
60
Chicago ReaderJoshua Katzman
Moderately entertaining popcorn thriller. Read full review
60
EmpireKim Newman
Remember the film you hoped "Snakes On A Plane" would be – this is it! By any sane cinematic standards, meretricious trash … but thrown at you with such good-humoured glee that it's hard to resist. It's a bumper-sticker of a movie: honk if you love tits and gore! Honk honk honk. Read full review
60
Boxoffice MagazineAmy Nicholson
The script is ridiculous, the bodies are great and the film skates so long on the line between knowingly bad and bad that by the time the body count hits 100 and the booby count hits 1000, we've lost track of the difference. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
Gratuitous in every sense of the word, this second remake of 1978's Joe Dante-directed/Roger Corman-produced "Jaws" knockoff is ridiculous summertime drive-in fun. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
Piranha 3D is more funny than disgusting, even when screen fills with half-nude swimmers, bobbing like human dumplings in a roiling vat of borscht. This isn't just sick, it's clas-sick! Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesBetsy Sharkey
Piranha 3D is trying so hard for the laughs and the allusions amid all the gore, and endless bloodbath of bare naked ladies, that it completely forgets to frighten anyone. Read full review
50
VarietyPeter Debruge
The 32-year-old carnivorous fish franchise has lost none of its bite, serving up a fresh batch of spring-break revelers for the fearsome creatures to attack. Read full review
42
The A.V. ClubNathan Rabin
Piranha 3D realizes its guilty-pleasure camp potential for about a minute and a half, proving yet again that there's no concept so foolproof filmmakers can't screw it up. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman
There are few real scares, though, and even fewer actual laughs. Despite several obvious gags, Aja never captures the spoofy fun of the 1978 original. Read full review
40
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
The entertainment formula behind this short and nasty movie - devised according to someone's idea of what teenage boys with the guile, the facial hair or the "guardian" to gain admission to an R-rated movie are likely to enjoy - is sloppy and simple. Read full review
38
Orlando SentinelRoger Moore
It's not as scary as it needs to be or as clever as it thinks it is, but the new 3D version of "Piranha" is at least as gimmicky as those fabled 3D films of yore. With all the pointless 3D cartoons and joyless 3D ""Clash of the Titans" conversions, at last here's a picture that tosses its cookies, its coffee cups and its D-cups right in your lap. Read full review
25
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
The film's centerpiece is a massacre at a wet T-shirt contest, which the horror director Alexandre Aja has a good time staging (yes, Eli Roth, we see you with the water gun). But it feels like an imitation of B-movie beach schlock and John Waters. The visual humor lacks wit or nerve. Read full review
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