We got the big elephant out of The Room (see what I did there? I made a shitty joke. No need to walk away! No!), so now it’s time to move on and NEVER BRING UP THAT FILM AGAIN FOR A YEAR.
Where do we go from here? The only way to go is down, and there is one movie you will inevitably come across down there. Birdemic: Shock and Terror! Oh no! This is a different type of movie than the ones we’d discussed in prior reviews. I’m a bit particular with what bad films constitute “bad films”; Sharknado, and most of the Asylum catalog I don’t count. They’re made to be schlocky, and they are aware that they’re bad. They’re also aware they’re movies; the actors know they’re acting, they know the premise is stupid, and it almost goes out of its way to come up with a stupid concept, milk it for all its worth, and to do so winkingly. And that’s fine; I’ve seen a LOT of the Asylum films (and might review one or two really obscure ones).
With this film, writer/director James Nguyen sets about remaking The Birds, going so far as to give Tippi Hedren a major credit (for her brief appearance on a TV screen. Not even in relation to this film, like, a character in this film happens to be watching Julie and Jack featuring Ms. Hedren). It’s obvious from the get-go that Nguyen has a point to make with this film, which is a combination of survival “horror”, and environmental message. But he obviously bit off way, WAY more than he could possibly hope to chew, and whether he’d intended to do so or not, he didn’t bother to even spit the remainder back onto the plate.
EDITOR: “But, this IS post.”
Technically and objectively, this movie is a mess. Having worked in audio, I understand how distracting bad sound mixing can be, and how not getting room tone is a huge problem when combining different takes of the same scene.
In the first scene of dialogue, Rod (played by Alan Bagh, whose name matches the sound I imagine he made when he saw this film, and who walks as if it were his first time using his legs. How do you fuck up walking?) meets Natalie (Whitney Moore) at a diner. He is greeted by a waitress, who is apparently waiting specifically for him to enter. The sound levels here are all over the place; the waitress sounds as if she were recorded at a low level, and had her dialogue boosted in post (which is a HORRIBLE idea, since every single sound recorded on the day is then boosted), and Rod’s dialogue is flatly mixed, at normal levels, and presumably with the camera mic, depending on the quality. The audible shifts in sound levels are disjointed, distracting, and laughably amateurish; it is a horrible shame, because this scene is all about the dialogue (which, itself, is pretty bad), and instead all you’re wondering is “Why is the sound so shitty?”
If the sound were the only technical aspect that was bad to the point of being legitimately distracting, that’d be bad enough. But, man, where to even begin? Alright, so Rod takes Natalie for a night on the town; this includes a montage sequence of a fair of some kind, and then the two of them hole up in a bar for a bit. The bar is empty; completely empty save for the both of them. Obviously the palce had been rented for the shoot, but there were no extras to fill the space, and there was an awkward performance from “nightclub” singer Damien Carter, as he joyously belted out how much fun it is “hanging out with [his] family/ having [themselves] a part-aayyyyy!” Scenes like this (a bar scene, a nightclub scene) require some sort of background to be full of people. Extras make the scene believable. Instead of thinking, “Oh, they’re having themselves a party”, we’re instead left thinking, “Why did they break into a closed club and force an obviously-scared man sing? And why is the sound still so shitty?”
The characters themselves are written as if by an alien who has been following around Tommy Wiseau, not knowing that Wiseau himself was also an alien and had learned humanity from a Speak ‘n’ Spell, and the performances, for the most part, follow the same logic. I’m under the sincere belief that even a merely competent director can eke out, at the least, a decent performance from even a non-actor. And after all these paragraphs, I haven’t even begun to discuss the plot!
What is the plot, you keep asking, learning nothing from this column? In its barest form, Birdemic is about Rod and Natalie, who start a relationship following Rod’s selling of green technology and solar panels, and Natalie wins a Victoria’s Secret photoshoot (which is apparently shot in a shopping mall studio). They go on a date, bang, and then…apropos of absolutely nothing…birds start attacking the town of Half Moon Bay. Then the couple wander about, “gathering” “supplies”, they pick up some newly-orphaned kids (who are oddly well-adjusted to their parents being horrifically murdered somehow), and then the birds just fly away, never to be mentioned again.
James Nguyen has a very pro-environment message with this film, one that is so heavy-handed, clumsy, and simplistic, it feels like a teenager wrote it during their “Everything I do is so deep and meaningful MAN” period. Ugh.
If there were anything intentionally interesting with this film, the heavy-handedness might be forgivable. But almost everything in this film is incompetently rendered. The actors (Bagh, especially), can’t seem to make anything look or sound convincing; and there is a near-obvious point where poor Ms. Moore realizes that this, more than anything, will be the work with which she is most easily recognized (don’t believe me? Watch Birdemic 2, where her resignation is even more obvious). The soundtrack — aside from the unintentionally funny dance song mentioned earlier — is either nondescript to the point that it could be removed, or a Casio-64 Bit version of John Lennon’s “Imagine” (of which the web address is prominently displayed in multiple scenes…again, apropos of nothing).
All of this doesn’t even come close to mentioning the “special” “effects”. Look, low-budget films naturally aren’t on the cutting edge of CGI or the like; but most filmmakers, when faced with special effects limitations, will come up with tricks to hide what can’t be achieved. But not so with this film!
The CGI birds are gifs. There’s no disguising that fact. They defy the laws of nature and hover, they explode (?!), and they vomit out some liquid that somehow, for some reason, kills people. The birds themselves wouldn’t be so egregious if the camera weren’t constantly moving and roving about, and if the shots didn’t hold on the shitty effects for minutes at a time. The lighting, and aforementioned sound are shockingly bad, the plot meanders from one non-interesting event to another, characters walk around doing…stuff…and then the movie just peters out. The birds fly off, with no reason for them to do so, and no reason as for why they were attacking in the first place.
As a “message film”, Birdemic is a joke. As a “scary movie”, this movie is a failure. As a dramatic, interesting film, this movie is a bore. As a movie made by a child…well, Birdemic is really great in that case! If you want to laugh your ass off at gif birds hovering in mid-air while being “attacked” by humans wielding coat hangers; if you want to see characters wandering about in search of a plot; if you want to see kamikaze birds that explode on impact; if you want to see how NOT to make a suspenseful movie; if you want to see a man who may or may not be Tommy Wiseau show up as a tree-hugger; if you want to be amazed at “acting”!…well, then this is the movie for you. It has taken me much too long to write this review, much longer than it possibly could have taken to make this movie.
Next time, we’ll be looking at a film over 25 years in the making…
