Birdemic: Shock And Terror
I once saw a dead bird lying to the side of a nearly desolate road getting picked apart by maggots and other insects. I was riding my bike on a hot day and the smell twisted my gut and forced me to stop, forced me to glance in that direction and I was absolutely awed by the wretchedness of the sight. Drying blood had become brown on the asphalt, little squirming maggots feasted on the moistest parts, and the poor avian creatures’ beak was partly open to reveal more things squirming inside. Flies were buzzing around its body. It was horrible and ghastly, but an oddly compelling image that has stayed with me throughout the years. I don’t really want it in my head but it will always be there. And so will Birdemic. I was enthralled with the ineptitude of this cinematic debacle. This film manages to get every aspect of the medium wrong. From plot to visuals to acting and even the sound, the film is an absolute tragedy to the art and an irredeemable mess in every way possible.
I think about that bird on the road, a desiccated and rotting thing devoured by maggots and how it’s been seared in my minds’ eye. The theme music begins and it’s very loud… and then very soft… and then very loud and the credits roll over a video montage of a small coastal town along the California coast. The wind blows across the camera’s mic constantly and we finally focus on a slowly moving car driven by our films protagonist. Vacantly staring into the abyss, our hero somehow manages to suck any possible emotion from each and every word he speaks with all the qualities of a nervous robot. He awkwardly walks, slowly, from one place to another without daring to swing his arms in fear that too much action might just wear him out. He meets the films other protagonist, a girl who sat in front of him in High School and who is now a fashion model and who he has somehow found the courage to finally ask out on a date. She never stops smiling. Her lips seem to be constantly peeled back from her gleaming white teeth and her eyes are pulled open by invisible fish-hooks. Maggots were eating the eyes of that dead bird on the road.
After offering various concessions and a fifty percent discount on a product, our “hero” eventually makes a big million dollar sale and spends the next first third of the film showcasing the writers absolute ignorance regarding economics in the market place. He follows this up with a brutally awkward first date that includes immediate talk about marriage and starting a family. I never talked about that dead bird on a single date I’ve been on. I think it might be wrong. And when our Hero decides to start up his own business, selling solar panels that use nano-technology, he’s a huge success who rounds up his next big sale in the range of one billion dollars. This entire first act of the film continually builds on our heroes budding relationship with the back-drop of looming environmental catastrophe.
The birds attack.
I stared in open mouthed “shock and terror.” I don’t want to tell you why right now. I can’t tell you why. Please don’t make me remember this?!?!!! Fine… FINE!!! GIF level CGI… we are talking card board cutouts digitally inserted into the film at random points and slowly flapping their wings while floating in place around the characters forced to interact with the lamest special effect EVER put on film. A trip to the dollar store for fake birds and fishing line would have created a better effect, good god! But that first shot is a thing of special beauty… video footage of a town with superimposed images of these birds attacking, dive bombing, exploding, and otherwise creating mayhem. None of these buildings actually explode, mind you… the image of an explosion is simply super-imposed over the building.
I wondered, briefly, if a bird might mistakenly believe I had been responsible for the death of this lone crow and fly at my head. I was twelve at the time. I vividly remember wondering if I would be able to fend it off from me. I never once considered the use of a coat-hanger. And yet our heroes immediately set forth armed with coat hangers and leap into a van where the local Iraqi veteran has stashed a fully automatic rifle and his side-arm. And they drive off for the next act, a wandering and rambling mess of narrative that includes scene after scene of bird carnage and environment catastrophe. And we wander… and we wander… and we pick up two children along the edge of a deserted highway where several cars just kept driving across the edge of the picture frame and the microphone picked up various engine roars. We follow the characters as they dare to enter a small market, get some lunch, and then go on a FREAKIN’ PICNIC ON THE BEACH!!!!! THIS MOVIE IS STUPID!!! STUPID!!!! KILL ME!!! KILL THE MEMORY!!!!
Finally, our heroes face great hardship when they start to lose members of their party. The soldiers’ girlfriend is killed while squatting on the side of the road and the soldier is killed after he attempts to rescue several people stranded on a tour bus. Do you want to know what kills him? This is spoiler territory here… SCREW YOU MOVIE!!!! The birds piss acid on him and the other trapped people! THEY PISS ACID ON THEM!!!!
No, I’m not going to spoil any more of this film for you. I’m done. I’m done with this review. I’m just flat out done. I don’t know if it can ever get much worse than this film… I don’t know if I can handle a film worse than this gadawful monstrosity and I don’t know if I ever want to challenge myself again on this. So, despite the fact that this is the worst film I’ve ever seen… I’m staring at the images in my head and I realize that there is an absolute ugliness to this work and it has to be seen. I can’t dissuade you from putting the DVD in your own player, I can’t keep you from pressing the button, and I don’t want to. I want you to understand what this film is, I want you to understand what I see and what I feel. I recommend that you sit back and watch Birdemic: Shock and Terror in all its wretched glory.
0 out of 5.
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