Movies
Alex Aja Defends Post 3-D ‘Piranha’, Talks Blood and Guts
When Dimension Films delayed Piranha 3D – Alex Aja’s remake of Joe Dante’s classic 80’s film – speculation ranged from the fact that Dimension wanted to avoid a box office battle with Lionsgate’s Kickass to the notion that the film needed a lot more work in FX department. While we wait until August for the massive attack, Aja talked with MTV about the post 3-D conversion, while also revealing a few scenes that he enjoyed shooting.
The conversation kicks off with a little Piranha hype.
“I understand why James Cameron in “Avatar” didn’t want to make the 3-D gimmicky, and he was right,” he tells MTV. “But we are making a piranha-attacking-spring-break movie, so we are going to go for the huge on-the-screen effects and fish attacking the audience.”
Aja claims to have been skeptical of post-conversion 3-D until he saw footage of Star Wars and Titanic.
“We were going to shoot with the camera system Cameron used, and we found out that, of course, we don’t have the same budget as an “Avatar” or as much time. And shooting on the water with a real 3-D camera brings some very big restrictions in terms of dealing with reflections. But I was very, very skeptical about the 3-D conversion, because it felt so unnatural to create 3-D when it’s flat at the beginning. And I saw a lot of demo reels, like some of the James Cameron “Titanic” conversion scenes, some of “Star Wars,” and 20 minutes of Peter Jackson’s “King Kong” fully converted into 3-D, and that was simply the best 3-D I’ve ever seen. Period.” That’s a bold statement. He’ll regret this after he sees Clash.
Speaking of Clash of the Titans, when you guys see that (or Alice in Wonderland), it will be quite apparent why post-3-D conversion is garbage. Aja defends his post-conversion process citing budget issues and the fact that all of the fish are CG.
“I was sold. And in addition to that, because all of our piranha are CG, they are all real 3-D in the computer. Our movie is going to be completely converted, but a big chunk of it will be real 3-D as well.”
For those of you who can’t wait until August, Aja explains just how blody the film is while also teasing one of his fav 3-D sequences.
“I think everything involving the fish is going to be fantastic. The biggest thing for the fans is going to be the big spring-break wet T-shirt contest, where we have thousands of spring-break groups on the water, and the party has its climax when the piranhas come and start attacking everyone. It’s almost 25 minutes of a huge massacre, and it’s really insane. I think we broke all the records in the manner of blood used. I don’t remember the exact number, but we passed “Kill Bill.” You’ve never seen something like that before.”
He continues, “Then there’s a more specific 3-D area, where at one point there’s a boat that’s sinking and they are rescued by another boat, and they cannot exit because there are a lot of rocks, and they are pulling a rope in between the two boats — like a ski rope — and they have to cross over, and the piranha are jumping, trying to get them. It’s a very, very big 3-D moment.”
Piranha 3D arrives in theaters August 27.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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