FILM: Piranha 3D (dir: Alexandre Aja, 2010)

"Zoom in! Zoom, zoom, zoom, ZOOM!"

Inception may have tickled the brain cells, but Piranha 3D is easily one of the most entertaining movies of the Summer. It is a full-blooded, 18-rated horror that genuinely delivers. Piranha 3D hearkens back to classic 1980s slashers, except instead of one masked killer and a handful of teenagers in the woods, here we have a massive shoal of cold-blooded murderers with 20,000 college kids on Spring Break! The casting is also a retro-fest, with Elisabeth Shue giving a strong performance as the local sheriff, Jerry O'Connell sleazing with ease as the seedy internet-porn director, and brief cameos from Richard Dreyfuss, Dina Meyer and Christopher Lloyd. Kelly Brook was born to play a bikini-clad soft-porn star in a 3D movie, and as our innocent protagonist and moral compass, Steven R McQueen (The Vampire Diaries) impresses throughout. Indeed, a strength is that the film is played seriously, eschewing the high-camp theatrics of the 1980s film, and once the very low-key first half set-up (with emphasis on totally gratuitous T&A) makes way for the ensuing non-stop bravura rollercoaster of set-pieces, there is a real sense of menace and jeopardy the moment anyone makes contact with water. 3D has not been used with such gleeful abandon in a horror movie since Friday the 13th Part III in 3D (which may have had a 3D flying eyeball, but this film trumps it with a bitten-off penis!). The inevitable Jaws references are nicely handled (an abundance of yellow inflatables, the reverse-dolly-zoom shot aptly deployed), but Aja makes Piranha 3D its own lean, mean, pacy movie. The astonishing scale of the carnage at the lake party in particular is handled superbly, with impressive make-up effects, and there are some excellently-realised swift gore gags along the way. The poorly-rendered CG/3D effects in the opening scene are alarming initially, but thankfully this is the film's only major misfire. Leave your brain in the car park, sit back and enjoy the pure popcorn horror entertainment on offer here.