Birdemic: Shock and Terror

I just got done watching Birdemic for the first time, I knew it was made on 10,000 dollars and it is regarded as one of the worst movies of all time. This same day I also watched The Happening and The Crawling Eye (MST3K version) so maybe I was feeling masochistic. This movie was all around bad in every aspect. It looks like it was shot on a fairly cheap digital video camera and it's obvious that the sound was recorded from the microphone built into the camera instead of a boom mic. I know that because the sound is very awful, the actors have to be pretty close to the camera to be heard right, and there's way too much loud background noise which in post production they played a lot of public domain elevator music to drown out the background noise. The worst audio issue was when they film on the beach because the sounds of the beach are 5 times louder than the actors voices.

The movie itself is very slow paced, the first half of the movie is just the main guy meeting his dream girl and building their relationship. The problem is that nobody in this movie can act and the writing was pitiful so what we get are very bland characters, not even vanilla more like tofu bland. We get no reason to care about these people in any way and to make them less likable the main guy has to talk about solar panels, hybrid cars, global warming, and even the war in Iraq as much as he can. The script is almost a love letter to Al Gore. This feels like an eternity where it goes from his boring job that he is way too enthusiastic about, his obsession with a greener world, and his dates.

The second half of the movie is when the birds finally go on a rampage. Lots of 2D computer generated birds that fly around in circles and attack their prey by hovering in place while moving their wings up and down and making the same noise looped over and over the whole movie. Somehow these berserk eagles can set house on fire as well as kill people in one swoop. The couple ends up meeting another couple who lets them ride in their van, this van has everything from handguns and two AK-47 assault riffles with unlimited ammo (I'm guessing the van has Game Genie,) as well as medical supplies, and anything the plot requires. Most of the movie has these people gunning down birds and searching for survivors. The survivors they meet all have long boring monologues about how it isn't the eagles we should be afraid of, it's global warming and mankind's use of fossil fuels that is responsible for this disaster.

As far as the action goes, it's about as lame as the trailer makes it look. When someone dies it's just a bird hovering in front of the person and they fall down with blood make up on them. There's also some really pointless scenes there just to raise the body count like a man who pulls a gun on them (even though they still have an assault riffle that they seem to forget about for the rest of the movie)who wants their gas, which they say cost them 100 dollars a gallon. There's a whole lot of nothing interesting going on. At least companies like Troma can take a 10 cent movie and throw in lots of nudity, over the top gore, and comedy. The people behind Birdemic have the worst CGI effects since the old Star Trek movies and long speeches about the environment. If you watch it, bring some friends and laugh at it because it works in that regard. Other than that it's Duck Hunt: The Movie.

Rod runs into former classmate model Nathalie. Global warming and blah blah. Birds attack.

Horrible acting. Horrible writing. Badly stilted dialogue. Ill-fitting music. Horrible directions. Long boring non-scenes. Bad special effects. It's hilarious for about two minutes as it smacks your face all at once. Then it's intermittently funny as new levels of awfulness occurs. This is an incredibly bad movie. It's a student film at best. The bad sound design gets annoying. The squawking mixed with planes on bombing runs is as terrible as it gets. I'm comfortable giving this movie one star. The laughs are not generated deliberately. I'm laughing at how bad this is. I do want to give this a pity point. I can't. I can't. One point for the effort. These people tried. They're not good but they tried.

Where does one start? How can you mentally digest something like Birdemic? I am still in shock. I have seen some shitty movies in my time. But Birdemic, friends and neighbors, is the worst movie in the history of film-making, on this planet or in any other dimension for that matter. It is bad, OMG, right off the scale on the shitometer. The acting? Poor Alan Bagh, is he a living, walking wooden plank? Special effects? I swear, the birds are cardboard cutouts dangling from strings. For some reason, they explode when they hit something. Why? Why is that? Can't somebody explain, for freak's sake?

Everything stinks so very gaggingly. A rhesus monkey with a camcorder poking out of its arse would do better. Beware, my friends, beware of this abomination that is Birdemic.

This is one of my favorite movies of all time. I do not mean that it is a good movie, as it is one of the worst movies ever made. However, the magnitude of this movie's failure makes it a truly original experience. Birdemic Shock and Terror puts your mind in a place between awe and crying from laughter. No other movie, even ones with comparable ratings , can compare to this movie. This movie pulls off awful in such a way that blows your mind. After you watch this movie, you will be left speechless for almost a 1/2 hour just trying to comprehend what you just watched. It is truly a one-of-a-kind experience that I feel everyone should have.

Given that "Birdemic" has been blasted by many critics, I think I should say something positive about it to start off with. The scenery of Half Moon Bay is agreeable, for one thing, and Ms. Moore has at least a modicum of charisma; also, anyone who appreciates a stylish blue hybrid Mustang rolling along in a stately manner gets to savor that very sight in many lingering shots. All positive aspects of this film.

Less positive aspects of this film are legion, so much so that I'm reminded of my wish that IMDb.com would allow a vote on a scale from 1 to 100 rather than 1 to 10 (in which case "Birdemic" would rate at least a 3 out of 100 for the reasons mentioned, and perhaps a 4 for meaning well (though the message about global warming comes across in a preachy and ham-handed manner)). Still, something about the profoundly amateurish quality of this film makes it feel a little unfair to rate it at all ~ in much the same way that it would feel wrong to grade a term paper on the basis of some rough notes jotted down before writing the paper rather than the paper itself. This film very much reminds me of a rough draft ~ a sort of rough visualization of what the film would have been if the producer had more resources at his disposal (thus making the upcoming larger-budget sequel all the more intriguing).

Yet, I wonder if this film might have been less entertaining if it were better made. If it featured better sound, editing, writing, acting, direction and special effects, it might just be a forgettable homage to "The Birds"; its very flaws elevate (or should I say depress?) it to a special level otherwise occupied by a few special films like "The Room" and "Manos: the Hands of Fate" ~ the legendary realm of films that are so bad they're good. So, giving it the benefit of the doubt as a real film and not just a rough draft, I tender my vote of 1 out of 10 and hope that other fans of this film will also give it an appropriately low vote and insure its rightful place on the Bottom 100 (once it gathers the requisite number of votes).