While it's fairly common to dismiss horror sequels as cheap knock-offs that merely cash in on superior originals, most genre fans generally find one or two good things to say about these follow-ups. Not so with Piranha Part Two: The Spawning, a sequel so undeniably bad even its director, one James Cameron, prefers not to mention it, despite the fact that it's the first film he ever directed. His one ironic comment, "I think it was the best flying piranha film ever made", sums up the situation quite neatly.
So yes, this time the genetically altered killer fish can fly, and they've also reached the ocean (although that event is completely unrelated to the end of the first Piranha). Their lair is a sunken ship off the coast of a Caribbean island, and when a couple decide to go swimming nearby, the killing spree begins, with only a scuba diving instructor (Tricia O'Neil) a biochemist (Steve Marchuk) and the local sheriff (Lance Henriksen) willing to stop them.
Retaining only the effective piranha sound effect from the first film, The Spawning goes off into its own direction and derails almost immediately. One can attribute this to first-time director Cameron being kicked out of the cutting room and losing all kind of control over the project (which is why he generally considers The Terminator his directorial debut), but the truth is the project was flawed from the very beginning: taking the Corman-derived cheapness to the extreme, the movie is sunk by lackluster writing (at least the original had some kind of subtext beyond the mayhem), poor performances (even Henriksen looks completely lost) and, most disappointingly, scaled-down special effects, namely winged fish that look so fake they lose all their credibility after a few minutes.
All in all, there are several inferior sequels, but few are as shockingly embarrassing as Piranha Part Two: The Spawning, which also "stands out" as a tragic footnote in the otherwise admirable filmography of a great director.
3,5/10
So yes, this time the genetically altered killer fish can fly, and they've also reached the ocean (although that event is completely unrelated to the end of the first Piranha). Their lair is a sunken ship off the coast of a Caribbean island, and when a couple decide to go swimming nearby, the killing spree begins, with only a scuba diving instructor (Tricia O'Neil) a biochemist (Steve Marchuk) and the local sheriff (Lance Henriksen) willing to stop them.
Retaining only the effective piranha sound effect from the first film, The Spawning goes off into its own direction and derails almost immediately. One can attribute this to first-time director Cameron being kicked out of the cutting room and losing all kind of control over the project (which is why he generally considers The Terminator his directorial debut), but the truth is the project was flawed from the very beginning: taking the Corman-derived cheapness to the extreme, the movie is sunk by lackluster writing (at least the original had some kind of subtext beyond the mayhem), poor performances (even Henriksen looks completely lost) and, most disappointingly, scaled-down special effects, namely winged fish that look so fake they lose all their credibility after a few minutes.
All in all, there are several inferior sequels, but few are as shockingly embarrassing as Piranha Part Two: The Spawning, which also "stands out" as a tragic footnote in the otherwise admirable filmography of a great director.
3,5/10