WARNING: This Review May Contain Spoilers
Here’s something funny and more specifically something I learned while writing this article and that is that I didn’t realise this remake even existed – only that it was remade in 2010 in 3D. On top of this, and a slightly more interesting fact, is that the original film from 1978 is actually a parody of Stephen Spielberg’s Jaws.
Opening Scene
With the above in my mind, re-watching the film I can see the homages to Jaws from the very beginning. For example, our first victims in this film are two hikers that decide to go skinny dipping in an abandoned pool – much like the two teenagers leaving the party at the beach. The remake starts in exactly the same way, just the one thing the original doesn’t have – is the gratuitous tit shot as they get into the pool.
Body Count
This is something I will always talk about with horror films, especially when they are being remade 20 years later as what people consider as horror shifted a lot in the time period. I say it a lot, but for some reason modern audiences expect more blood and gore for something to be considered as a horror film when, in actual fact, it’s what you don’t see that can be the scariest. Now, unlike Jaws because of the piranhas hunt in a school – they can attack more people at once and more violently. In the original film, there are at least 7 deaths of characters that we get to know, the most heart-breaking being that of Jack, but they also kill countless amounts of people at the newly opened resort.
I mentioned that the death of Jack in the original film is the most heart-breaking, unfortunately in the remake I don’t feel the same way. I don’t if that’s because I don’t get the same gentle old man vibe about the character or if it’s because they end up killing off his dog Brandy not long afterwards. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before but animal deaths upset me much more than those of humans in a horror film. Outside of the death of Brandy, the rest of the deaths seem to remain exactly the same.
The Relationship between Paul and Maggie
You know what I love about Maggie in the original film? She is a strong, intelligent woman that bosses Paul around from the very beginning! The important thing to remember about the original film is that Paul and Maggie are complete strangers in the original film and it is her that ropes Paul into taking her to the abandoned research centre instead of him offering, like any other guy – especially in the modern era of cinema. It’s also Maggie that gets the pair of them out of prison! Gradually Paul’s surliness towards Maggie begins to shift and his walls come down – both of them purely focused on stopping the spread of the piranhas.
What confused me a little bit is that the write-up for the remake is that Paul and Maggie are involved in the enhancement of the piranhas but having watched the film, their relationship is extremely similar to the original. The only differences are that Paul isn’t quite as surly as in the original, probably because he isn’t the same level of alcoholic,
Human Error
I think I pointed this out in my article about Joe Dante last year that the whole reason the piranhas get out and wreak havoc in the waters of Lost River Lake is because Paul and Maggie drain the swimming pool. If this doesn’t happen, you have no film. The same goes for the remake as once again they decide to drain the pool in order to see what it is at the bottom in case Barbara and David had drowned in there.
A Moment of Kindness and Self-Sacrifice
It’s very rare in films like these that you have characters who are part of the problem like Dr Robert Hoak who will put their lives on the line. Robert does exactly this when he dives off of the raft to save a young boy stranded on an upturned canoe. For a moment I thought they weren’t going to keep this in the remake but Dr Baines jump into the river to save the young boy on the canoe – the only difference being that she survives long enough to ask if the boy is OK before she dies.
Gender Swap
I wouldn’t say that this is relevant to the story of either film but I found it rather interesting that they decided to make Dr Baines, who is the remake equivalent to Dr Robert Hoak, a female scientist. I wondered if this would be the case because they had merged Dr Hoak and Dr Mengers into the same character which seems to be the case as they do not introduce the military at all in the remake. Instead it is J.R Randolph that makes the police take Paul and Maggie in custody.
In Conclusion
I’m going to be completely honest, it’s pretty hard to discuss a remake of a film when it is practically a frame by frame copy of the original film. What I will say however is that the 1995 version does not come across as TV film which I later discovered that it is. I’m not going to say I don’t like the remake because where there is no massive difference and because the acting isn’t bad, it’s hard to criticize but I think I’ll only re-watch the original.
