Review: Birdemic: Shock and Terror

     For a long time I've enjoyed watching really bad movies. I've seen all of the classics: Plan 9 From Outer Space, Eegah, Gymkata, Troll 2 and several others (although I have yet to sit through the entirety of Tommy Wiseau's The Room. I gave up after the three identical sex scenes in the first 20 minutes). All of these movies are so bad that they are entertaining. The technical goofs, the stilted acting, the ludicrous plots, the absurd lines of dialogue are hilarious if you have an understanding of what a film could've been. Birdemic: Shock and Terror takes the concept of so bad it's good to a whole new level. Most movies that are really bad are comfortable to sit in their own genre, and while they are trying hard they usually aren't meant to be taken to seriously. They're usually just popcorn flicks (which Troll 2 took a little too literally) that focus on the action and don't contain any real messages. Birdemic, which is a movie about birds attacking people doesn't have any bird attacks until 47 minutes into the 93 minute movie. The film also contains a lot of heavy handed messages about global warming and the war in Iraq. Because Birdemic is able to separate itself from other terrible movies in this way as well as being a ripoff of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, it elevates itself to the position of the worst movie I have ever seen.

     The movie opens with a long credit sequence that focuses on a car driving very slowly while generic royalty free music plays in the background. There is a lot of slow driving in this movie, almost every time someone drives a car from one place to another, the camera follows them in real time as if we wouldn't believe it if a person just suddenly arrives in the next scene, we need to see how they get there. This includes 3 scenes at a gas station because global warming is evil. The story itself is about a software salesman, Rod, who makes a fortune on his stock options when the company he works for gets bought for the conveniently round sum of $1 billion. He then takes this money and invests it in starting a company that makes affordable solar panels, for which he receives even more money. So things are going pretty well for Rod. Meanwhile, Rod reunites with Nathalie, a girl from his high school who is now a fashion model who has just secured a spot as a Victoria's Secret cover model, yet for some reason is being dogged by her mother who wants her to start a career in real estate, you know in case the whole “modeling” thing doesn't work out. The first half of the movie is about Rod and Nathalie's courtship, culminating in a love scene in a motel even though both of the character's are wealthy homeowners that they could have sex in. 

     When they wake up the next morning, Rod and Nathalie discover that the birds, for seemingly no reason, have gone crazy and are now attacking the city. The special effects for the birds are terrible. They look like animated .gifs from a mid 90s geocities site. Some of them dive-bomb buildings, making WWII airplane noises and inexplicably exploding. Others hover menacingly (because hummingbirds aren't the only birds that can hover) and peck/ claw out your eyes. Rod and Nathalie meet up with another couple, who until this point have never been introduced, and they fight off the birds with clothes hangers so they can make it to their car, which contains an incredible amount of automatic weapons, which still have the orange tips on the barrels. They encounter some children whose parents have been killed by the birds, because kids are cute and they'll pull on the heartstrings of the audience, even though immediately after being rescued by Rod and company they are happily playing a PSP, despite that their parents just died. The group also meets a scientist who, while he admits that he doesn't have the science to support it, he can say without a doubt that the birds have gone crazy because they have the bird flu which was caused by global warming. The group spends almost all of the second half of the movie outside, exposed to bird attacks. There are scenes where they both eat and then shit outside. The first half of the movie was almost entirely indoors, when there was no birdemic, but now that the birds are attacking the characters are outside all the time. This leads to some hilarious moments where the actors are playing that they are under attack and everyday, non-movie life is continuing as normal behind them. While they're gunning down hovering eagles, traffic is carrying on in the background as though there is no birdemic going on at all. Ultimately, the birds just stop attacking with just as much suddenness and explanation as when they began attacking.

There's no getaway vehicle quite like a beat up Ford Aerostar

     The acting in this movie is atrocious. The actor who plays Rod comes off as a robot trying to learn human emotion. Everything about him is awkward, he walks like a character in The Sims and mumbles and stutters over his lines. He asks Nathalie out to a “vetnamese” restaurant, and pitches his business idea for affordable “sole pimels.” And he's not the only one, Nathalie's mom straight up forgets her lines mid-take and just barely gets them out. For some reason director James Nguyen decided to keep rolling and leave these flubs in. The cinematography is also incredibly awkward, there are lots of dutch angles, but it appears that this is largely due to the director trying to fit the camera into places that it doesn't really fit in to. The editing, both sound and video, is also awful. The characters stop giving their lines, but the camera lingers on them anyway as they stand there awkwardly with nothing to say. There are a couple times where two takes are used from the same angle causing the characters to appear to skip as though there is a scratch on the disc, even though I watched this on Netflix. There is a shot that shows the two main characters dancing at a nightclub, which is obviously greenscreened, because there is no place harder to film at than a nightclub. There are times when the movie uses unnecessary ADR to put in voices and sound in post-production, but at the same time there are other scenes where the dialogue is drowned out by the background noise of the ocean and the wind, and other times the sound drops out entirely. 

She obviously didn't imagine hard enough

     The movie also has this heavy handed message about the dangers of global warming. Rod drives a hybrid car, he installs solar panels on his house, he starts a green tech company, on a date Rod and Nathalie go to movies to see An Inconvenient Truth, and when Rod goes to the gas station the camera lingers on the $4.50 gas prices for social commentary. There is also a lot of promotion for Yoko Ono's website imaginepeace.com, there are big posters and the characters wear t-shirts with the URL on them. There's also a scene in the woods where the group talks to a hippie who lives in a tree who notes that the birds only attack people who drive cars. Because global warming is causing the birds to attack. 

     The director, James Nguyen, was heavily influenced by Alfred Hitchcock and cites Vertigo and The Birds as his favorite films. As a result he has created two movies which are direct ripoffs of those movies, Replica and now Birdemic. As a homage to The Birds, Tippi Hedren, who was the lead in Hitchcock's film, makes an appearance in Birdemic. On a television screen. Yet this footage of her earned Ms. Hedren third billing in this film. There's a lot more that I haven't gotten to, and I could go on for much longer about why this movie is so terrible yet amazing, but the only way to get a full appreciation for this movie is to see it yourself. I highly recommend that you download Rifftrax's accompanying audio track for some Mystery Science Theater 3000 style commentary. Finally, due to the cult success of Birdemic: Shock and Terror, a sequel is currently in the works. Expect to see Birdemic II:  The Resurrection 3D at your local midnight screening later this year.

This shit is happening

Rating: 0/10 - Evil, but see it anyway