INTERVIEW: Alexandre Aja Director Of Piranha 3D

Spolier Warning

This interview reveals elements of the plot that give away the outcome of dramatic episode within the film.

French filmmaker Alexandre Aja burst onto the international horror scene in 2003 with the ultra-violent slasher High Tension. Since then he scared audiences with his remake of Wes Craven classic The Hills Have Eyes and disappointed many with Mirrors. His latest film is a throwback to the fun, sleazy horror films of the ‘80s where on-screen violence was accompanied by a great deal of beautiful women naked. The gore in Piranha 3D goes to extreme levels ‘80s horror could only ever dream of reaching, and it does it all in 3D. I’m a huge fan of the film and I got the chance to talk to Aja all about it.

Piranha 3D is packed with gore and nudity on levels we very rarely, if ever, see in Hollywood movies. How did you get away with it?

That was the whole idea behind the movie, to do a homage to the ‘80s guilty pleasure genre movie. Those movies were able to go from one extreme to another, to show tension and fear and then show comedy and a sex scene. I didn’t want to make a spoof. I wanted to make a fun, extreme movie with a huge piranha attack in it. The last person who really did that [sort of thing] was Peter Jackson with Braindead. Was it called Braindead or Dead Alive in New Zealand?

It was Braindead here. It was called Dead Alive and censored in the US, but in New Zealand we had the original version Braindead.

Yeah that’s the way it was released in France as well.

I loved Braindead and just like with Piranha 3D you come out of it with a huge grin, laughing with your mates about the best parts, not feeling scared and horrible like you come out of some horrors.

Yeah I really didn’t want to do a straight scary horror movie, I wanted to do a comedy with horror moments.

Part of the fun with Piranha 3D is the use of 3D. How would you describe the differences between how 3D is used in your film compared to Avatar?

Oh there’s a major difference. Avatar is an amazing, very elegant window on a beautiful CGI landscape and everything is more in-depth than out-of-the-screen. I wanted to go in exactly the opposite direction where you have boobs, blood, guts and piranha flying right out of the screen at the audience. I wanted to create an immersion of the audience inside that lake. I understand that we cannot use 3D in a very gimmicky way for every single story, but somehow because Piranha was just so fun and popcorn, it was a perfect subject to use 3D in this extreme way.

Piranha 3D has some full-frontal female nudity, tonnes of naked breasts and even some penis. Were you trying to push boundaries with the on-screen nudity?

You know, I was not trying to push boundaries - I was trying to push boobs out of the screen, that’s the only thing I was trying to push! I grew up in Europe and we have a different approach to nudity in films and on TV. I remember growing up on French beaches and maybe 98% of women and girls were topless on the beach in the ‘80s. And that was just natural. Spring Break is one of the last places where you have so much flashing and so much nudity. So I thought it was the perfect place to see beautiful chicks and then release the piranha to attack them.

How happy were you to land Kelly Brook in a main role where she was often naked?

I was really, really happy. To find the right actress was really hard because she was supposed to be beautiful, like the best body you can imagine, but also she needs some acting skills. She’s playing like the stripper with the big heart, she’s like a big sister to the hero and tries to help him make the first move on his girlfriend. She also goes through very extreme situations by the end of the movie. I was really impressed by Kelly’s physics but also by her charm. She was perfect.

There is some fantastic gore in this film. It has a high bodycount with a lot of outrageous deaths. What is your favourite death?

There are three moments I really, really like. One is the girl’s hair being caught in the [boat] propeller. It stops the propeller, but finally it starts again and pulls her face off. I really like that one because it works on your subconscious and you can really feel what it would be like. Another is how Riley Steele gets attacked and the way one of the piranha gets inside her body and comes out of her mouth. I think there is something very gruesome about the idea of a creature swimming through your body and getting out of your mouth. And then of course, because he’s my favourite character, the way Jerry O’Connell’s character dies, he gets some sort of fair revenge from the piranha for all the women he has abused in his life.

The hair in the propeller scene reminded me of a scene in your previous film High Tension where the main character pulled a shard of glass from her achilles tendon. Both scenes happened after I’d seen a lot of gore preceeding them in the film, but they still made me really cringe and wince and really stood out. You seem to have a grasp for violent scenes that work on primal fears and use them sparingly, alongside gore that kind of pleases the audience.

I see myself as an audience member. I’m really thinking about what would disgust me and make me cringe and what will make me laugh and what will scare me and make me go crazy. I think I’m more an audience member than a filmmaker somehow. You’re right, that moment with the hair in the propeller and the piece of glass in her ankle in High Tension, they are more strong and powerful than any gore moment. It’s because it directly relates to something in your mind that you understand and so you really get it. That is the reason why in all the Saw movies, for me the part that is the most scary, disgusting moment is still the needle trap in the second one. And yet, there is no blood, there is not one drop of blood. So I think you need something like that in Piranha. If you go only funny, it becomes a spoof. You have to find a way to go from one style to the other where you surprise the audience and then you get a very interesting edginess where you never know what’s going to happen next.

A sequel has already been greenlit - will you be involved with that?

We are exchanging ideas. It’s like The Hills Have Eyes, after I did the first one, I had a script [for a sequel] that I was really excited about and I said ‘Guys, if you want I’m doing that story because that’s the one I want’. They decided to go with another story so somebody else did that sequel. Here it’s the same. I have a few script ideas that will get me really excited and I would love to direct, but you know, I just don’t know yet what direction they will take.

Interview by Daniel Rutledge.

Piranha 3D is in cinemas now. Subscribe to Rip It Up to see it for FREE!

Question

If you were a movie director, what would your ultimate horror scene be?