Review by Adam Stephen Kelly
Stars Alan Bagh, Whitney Moore, Janae Caster, Colton Osborne, Catherine Batcha, Rick Camp, Tippi Hedren, Laura Cassidy, Stephen Gustavson, Eric Swartz, Patsy van Ettinger
Written by James Nguyen
Certification Unrated
Runtime 90 minutes
Directed by James Nguyen
I do not wish to divulge just how much time I spent deciding on how many stars to give this film, let alone how to construct this review. Birdemic is, to put it both bluntly and completely honestly, the worst film I have ever seen. It has received a worldwide cult following after its trailer became viral on the internet, which drove many to say that it is the true, unprecedented worst film of all time. So naturally, being the fan of odd movies that I am, I decided to check the trailer out. What I saw was indeed the stuff of cinematic nightmares, but worst film ever? I've seen the candidates: Troll 2, Leonard Part 6, Manos: The Hands of Fate. You name a terrible movie and the chances are I've seen it. But now, however, is the dawning of a new age in bad, because the Birdemic pandemic has landed.
If there was ever a film to really take the crown as the best worst movie, it's Birdemic. The plot alone reeks of God awfulness. This may appear like an “in a nutshell” synopsis, but this is honestly what the movie entails, and really all that happens from the opening to the credits: a small California town is plagued by flocks of homicidal eagles and vultures. No, your eyes do not deceive you—homicidal eagles and vultures—you read right. But that's not a terrible plot device, is it? Sure, it's outrageous, but Alfred Hitchcock made killer flocks genuinely scary in The Birds, where the flying things attacked a small town in California (and even The Birds' Tippi Hedren has a cameo on TV from an earlier film from director Nguyen). Oh wait, it sounds just like Birdemic. That's right—this is pretty much an unofficial remake, though you could never begrudge its existence quite as much as something like Rob Zombie's Halloween or Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot Psycho rehash. No, Birdemic is its own monstrosity—a strangely entertaining, gut-bustingly funny monstrosity that will mesmerise you with its sheer out-of-this-world trashiness. It's bad to the bone.
Beyond the unexplained assault of the winged killing machines upon California is the leading man and his attractive young girlfriend. Or who I would preferably refer to as two actors who can't act, so I'll be damned if I call them actors once more! The guy especially is horrendous; it really is a horrific performance—probably the worst I have ever seen. He's so completely lifeless and utterly useless, but he makes the film what it is: an accidental comedy. It doesn't help that the cast of the movie had to put up with a script that I swear James Nguyen found in a toilet somewhere, rather than wrote himself. I'd be impressed if a dog wrote the screenplay, but a fully functioning human being? Atrocious. Having said that, I'm not so sure if the performers would know a good script if it hit them in the face at 40mph, and probably thought Nguyen was the next award-winning scribe, rather than a man capable of putting such evil down on paper.
The birds themselves are horrifically hilarious. All the eagles look exactly the same and so do the vultures, flapping their wings stiffly like they've been copied straight from a computer game and pasted into the film. When they die they fall to the ground in one dreadfully awkward motion that is repeated over and over, every single time one dies, with death occurring by being shot by our non-actor hero, who teams up with an ex-marine who just so happens to carry a high-tech, laser-sighted pistol in his SUV, not to mention an assault rifle. They are seriously the worst creatures in any film I have ever seen. King Kong in the 1933 original is infinitely superior in every conceivable way. I'm very aware that I have said that about many elements in this picture, but it's all true—they are all the worst ever parts that add up to form the worst ever movie.
The sound 'design' is painful—most of the time you can't hear the dialogue because of gusts of wind blowing into the cheap camera. But we must be thankful for small mercies. Just like I must be thankful for my thesaurus.
With Troll 2's critically-acclaimed documentary Best Worst Movie making the rounds at the moment, I certainly wouldn't be surprised to see something similar in the future for Birdemic. I would love to see it a few years down the line when the dust has settled and the film is looked back on as the ultimate best worst movie, because it's the Troll 2 of the new millennium.
• Official Site
• Birdemic: Shock and Terror at IMDb
• Read Adam's interview with Birdemic writer/director James Nguyen