Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2008)

(note: before I begin the review, I want to direct everyone to Birdemic’s craptastic trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgAbVfh6WYg

Incomprensible acting? Check? Mind-boggling special effects? Check. The incredible metal song proclaiming “THIS IS BIRDEMIC!!!!!”? Check. It’s everything you would want (and need) out of a trailer to make you excited about seeing this movie. In fact, it’s probably what you should watch instead of the movie.

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

Ok, now that we all have that out of our system, onto the review…)

Oh boy. This review may come as a shock (shock and terror, you say?) to some, and perhaps an obvious statement to others, but Birdemic: Shock and Terror is a terrible, terrible movie. Not even achieving “so-bad-it’s-good” status, Birdemic is content on being an incompetent, incoherent mess. About halfway through watching this wreck of a movie, I wondered, “Surely, this is just an elaborate joke being played on the audience—an endurance test of sorts.” Had I walked into a Lars Von Trier movie by mistake? Am I supposed to be provoked into a ball of frustration, anger, shock and…terror? I was definitely provoked, alright. But more on that later.

The movie opens with a nausea-inducing credits sequence, where the camera seems to have been placed in the passenger seat of a car driving through the northern California hills. We meet Rod and Nathalie, two twenty-somethings that meet cute and begin dating. He’s an engineer shopping ideas around for a “big sale” (did someone say….one million dollars?); she’s a model on her way to becoming the cover girl for Victoria’s Secret. After a night of “passion”, something goes awry—that’s right: birdemic! Cue the metal song (or not, since it’s nowhere to be found in the movie. I kind of wish it was. It at least would have added some fun to the proceedings.). The couple proceed to fight off birds with…coathangers….then make their escape with another couple to a van containing semi-automatic weapons. They then proceed to drive along the interstate, helping people along the way, shooting birds, and stopping for the occasional picnic outside (the birds conveniently leave our heroes alone while enjoying an afternoon picnic). They also encounter some strangers who proceed to tell them about the dangers of global warming and how the birds are just angry at all the people driving their cars and wasting fossil fuels. Then, (spoiler alert?), after many lives have been lost due to leaving the windows rolled down in their cars (or maybe it was the bad musak version of John Lennon’s “Imagine” that caused them to keel over) the birds get bored and fly away. Cue end credits. Seriously, they get bored and fly away. The end.

Director James Nguyen, self-proclaimed “Master of The Romantic Thriller™”, created the movie as a labor of love and owing an obvious debt to Alfred Hitchcock’s classic The Birds. The problem here isn’t the sincerity—it’s the actual lack of any talent whatsoever. Of which there is none to be seen. The acting is wooden at best. The movie has a home video quality to it, with no lighting choices to be seen. All the audio is recorded through the camera, so if a car passes by during a scene of dialogue, good luck deciphering what was just said. The editing is downright atrocious—some scenes go on much longer than is necessary, others seem to cut off abruptly. Any scene which has a character wax poetic about global warming brings the film to an absolute halt. The ending is downright lazy. And what to say of the CGI birds? They’re by far the best thing about the movie, and they are about the only source of comic relief from the director. The birds seem to envelop the whole of the screen, never portraying any sense of realism or depth perception in the slightest. They also seem to have the ability to leave explosive poop droppings, which at least made me laugh every time that happened—just out of the sheer absurdity of it all.

So what to make of Birdemic’s rising status as a cult movie among midnight movie circuit? The movie is less than two years old (and only this year has it seemed to gain a following, seeing multiple releases among selected theaters), but it has captured some sort of cultural zeitgeist (at least among the film geek crowd). Much like another recent midnight movie hit, Tommy Wisseau’s wonderfully awful The Room, Birdemic has been bringing people in expecting at least something so bad they could laugh and enjoy themselves. Upon attending the midnight screening at Nashville’s excellent Belcourt Theatre, we were informed that we would probably leave the movie “seething with rage and anger”. We all laughed it off, knowing that we were inflicting the pain ourselves. At least we would have a good time with it, we thought to ourselves. Uh-huh. Well, when the movie finished, we were definitely filled with rage, but that enjoyment factor never really arrived. As I walked out of the movie, I said aloud “well, that was just awful,” and everyone around me gave me a nod of approval. They were probably just as speechless as I felt. I just couldn’t believe it. I’ve seen plenty of terrible movies in my day—how did this one somehow trump them all?

The problem with Birdemic isn’t that it doesn’t try. It tries really, really hard. I never doubted its earnestness for a second. What makes me angry is that the filmmakers had to realize what they created was a steaming pile, and they decided to release it anyway. There seemed to be no effort to make it better—this is what was created, and this is what the audience will get, and they’ll like it (or not). You could say I brought this all upon myself by watching it (I mean, you watched the trailer, right? What did you expect?). However, what seems to separate Birdemic from most other terrible movies (The Room, Ed Wood’s work) might just come down to a kind of cult of personality. The Room is also awful, no doubt, but it has been lovingly embraced by its audience, creating a truly incredible theatrical viewing experience (really the only true way to watch The Room—I doubt watching the movie on DVD will render it anything but an awful train wreck). The other factor that benefits The Room is that its auteur, Tommy Wisseau, is a genuinely odd dude, but this fact also informs his entire film. You can’t escape it. You come to the realization that Tommy Wisseau the character (or Johnny in the movie) and Tommy Wisseau the man aren’t that much different. The same can be said for something like Ed Wood’s Glen or Glenda, a truly strange movie. Ed Wood spends half the movie walking around in women’s cardigan sweaters, and you get a sense this isn’t an act. This is a look into the man himself, and what you see is truly weird, confounding, and somehow memorable (in its own terrible way). I don’t get any of this watching Birdemic. The movie doesn’t get weird enough to become memorable, and I don’t even get the feeling that the director has contributed anything to this movie. I also don’t think the audience really gets the ability to latch onto anything and make it their own. That’s because there is nothing in here worth riffing on, unless it’s the groan inducing speeches about global warming being the reason the birds are attacking. This movie should not have been released to an audience. It makes most other terrible movies I’ve seen in my lifetime not as terrible by default. This just makes me wish I had watched The Room instead.

Rating: Zero stars (out of 5)