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| They're nice enough to let you know what you're in for. |
Directed by: James Nguyen
Produced by: James Nguyen, Tim Ubels
Written by: James Nguyen
Budget: $10,000
Starring: Alan Bagh, Whitney Moore, Janae Caster, Colton Osborne, Adam Sessa
"Hanging out,
Hanging out,
Hanging out with the family,
Havin' ourselves a paaaar-tay!"
"Birdemic: Shock and Terror" is an entirely self-financed, independently produced horror-ecological film about what happens when humanity abuses the earth so badly that the birds have no choice but to fight back.
Rod (Bagh) is a software developer/salesman who seems to have everything going for him. He's secured the big sale, his green-tech company sold for a cool billion, and he's reconnected with the babe from his high school, Nathalie (Moore). Unfortunately, when the birds start attacking they must do everything they can to survive as the animals start exploding and spitting acid.
This is a movie you have to experience to really understand just how poorly made it is. From the very first panning shot over an ocean the movie looks cheap, and despite that fact that obvious effort was put into every aspect of its production, none of it came out looking good at all. In fact, I'm skipping even dividing stuff up into Good and Bad sections and will just talk about the movie.
It opens with a panning shot of the ocean, then a few establishing nature shots, and then credits over a total five minutes of shots of the main character driving and walking around. There is zero dialogue, just a few shots of Rod himself, and the entire sequence plays out against the most public-domainy music since the Always Sunny theme song.
The first line of dialogue is so heavily distorted and edited that it's hard not to immediately start laughing, which is a problem that continues all the way through the movie until the end. There are no performances which claw their way out of this pit. Rod is giving his all, but the man cannot read lines without making it feel like he's reading lines. Nathalie tries her best and I could maybe see her working on a TV show in a non-recurring role, but not here. The news anchor could probably find a job voicing AI characters for video games. The only one that sticks out is Nathalie's mom, who could probably pull off a real mother character with a better script and direction.
Speaking of the direction, you can almost sense what Nguyen was telling them when he was shooting. "I don't know, fight the birds off. Yeah, they're all around you."
Oh, did I mention the birds are low-polygon animated gifs superimposed over the footage? No? Well they are.
Anyway, the "action" consists of the actors running around with fake guns, pointing them at birds which were inserted in post. The guns have muzzle flashes which, if you pause at the right time, you can see are just more clip art. At one point Rod and Nathalie go to a market and parade, and there's another few minutes of classic "a parade's happening for cheap footage" footage.
The movie has plenty of filler in it, and not just driving or parades. There are often long stretches where nothing at all happens...it's just establishing shot and establishing shot. I ended up counting all the driving/walking scenes alone and got roughly 30 minutes. That's nearly a third of the entire movie dedicated to filler!
Should You Watch it?
"Birdemic" is a movie best experienced with some sort of commentary, be it provided or with a group of friends, but it is one that should be experienced. I use the word a lot, but "inept" fits it so well you'd be hard pressed to describe it some other way. This is one of those movies where everything fits together so right that you can't help but marvel at what the human mind is capable of doing.
It's fun just to look and see all the non-attacking birds in the background, or the extras going about their day when the birds are supposedly attacking everyone in the world. Actors forget their lines and either stammer, pause, or the camera will cut to cover it up. There is a sequel out there which, from what I hear, falls prey to the classic bad-movie-sequel issues of being too self-aware of its reputation to actually be a fun-bad movie and just ends up being a bad movie, which is a shame.
At least we'll always have Birdemic.
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