Rod (Alan Bagh) is a successful businessman whose life is going right for him. One day he meets Nathalie (Whitney Moore), a beautiful fashion model who he used to go to school with. They strike up a relationship but just as they’re falling for each other eagles and vultures start to attack the town, leading Rod and Nathalie to fight for their survival.
The title of this film gives you a big hint as to what to expect. Writer/Director James Nguyen is obviously no talent; the film assembled more of filmmaking and writing mistakes and errors than achievements. Inspired by Hitchcock’s The Birds and Al Gore’s environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Nguyen bashes the viewer over the head with his environmental message, while also trying to scare them with birds that look like they have been created on Microsoft Publisher. The film is so poorly constructed you can almost see the sellotape holding it together. The actors, fighting as they are against a horrific script, don’t fare much better. Most of the performances are flat and stilted; Alan Bagh seems dead behind the eyes, with only Whitney Moore managing to act naturally in front of the camera. You’ve got to wonder why this film is being released on Blu-ray as extra detail and clarity, what little there is, is not going to help it.
Yet here is the thing, Birdemic is funny. Don’t get us wrong, not in an intentional way, but it is entertaining. Birdemic enters the pantheon of ‘So Bad They’re Good’ films, where the cocktail of bad filmmaking serendipitously creates a film of unintentional fun and entertainment, sitting alongside films such as Samurai Cop, Miami Connection and The Room. It’s impossible not to laugh, as the characters swipe at the CGI birds with coat hangers, or dialogue gets cut off as three different takes are badly sliced together in a single shot, or the birds inexplicably spit acid at people or explode when they fly in to things. The film is over 90 minutes long, but it surprisingly passes fairly quickly. It gets to the point where you do wonder whether the film is just one big joke but that would ruin the magic of such a poor creation.
It’s difficult to give Birdemic a proper star rating. If you’re looking for a well made, genuinely good movie, then this is certainly not for you and you should consider it a one. However, if you’re a fan of B movies and are entertained by the ineptitude of catastrophic filmmaking, then grab a few friends, get some drinks and snacks and make a night of it and consider Birdemic an entertaining seven. We struggle in any good conscience to give it a positive rating, so we’ll have to go somewhere in the middle.
BIRDEMIC: SHOCK AND TERROR / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR AND SCREENPLAY: JAMES NGUYEN / STARRING: ALAN BAGH, WHITNEY MOORE, COLTON OSBOURNE, JANAE CASTER / RELEASE DATE: 15TH FEBRUARY
