Fishing with Alexandre Aja

Piranha 3D 

Interview; Alexandre Aja

Frenchman Alexandre Aja is all about the guts, gore, and gorgeous girls in his latest Spring break splatter fish flick ‘Piranha 3D’.

Splatter flicks are few and far between in modern cinema. A popular horror sub-genre in the late 70s, early 80s, bloodshed and carnage are a plenty, so much so the films become more laughable than horrific.

“The 80s had a very specific ideology of shifting from one tone to the next. The ability to go from laughing to utter horrified, from sexy to stripper gore. I grew up watching these movies and loving them. This has been completely lost in modern horror films, where you have to stay in the tone you establish from the opening scene. I just wanted to screw all those conventions and do something very free.” Aja said.

“The film might be the most gory movie I have made so far, but it is definitely not as intense or traumatising as ‘The Hills have Eyes’, absolutely not, that is not the tone. The main goal was to entertain. Making this movie was like drawing the blue print of a roller coaster. I wanted to make something that is purely fun from beginning to end, with different visual emotions. An action adventure ride, not necessarily story or character driven. The film is about the experience, enjoying the ride!”

Possibly, one for the boys, the film revolves around thousands of perky adolescents soaking up Spring break, with boobs, bikinis, and well…more boobs.

“It is all my fault. I wanted to make a guilty pleasure, the movie I would have loved to see when I was fifteen. That includes naked girls when they are not justified.” Aja jokes

“Spring break is such an interesting phenomenon, there is so much nudity all the time. It is such a nice metaphor for ‘the American society’, with profanities, truths and evils.  Spring break allows people to be completely free for one week. I wanted the girls to look like they’re from MTV and have the Piranha really attack this world”

“We were like a big family of a thousand people shooting this film. It was really fun and very hard to focus at times, but we are shooting the Spring break, not living the Spring break.”

*Written and Published for Scene Magazine, QLD 

To visit the website; www.scenemagazine.com.au