Birdemic: Shock and Terror

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This is one of those ultra-bad movies that's so delightfully easy to consume, based on the fact that it's so incredibly terrible. 'Birdemic' is another one on the list of movies so bad, they're a ton of fun to watch; 'The Room', 'Troll 2', 'Manos', the list goes on. The super low production value is what makes it so entertaining, along with no-name actors and horrendous writing. In this case, a LOT of the writing is an environmental message with a hand so heavy, it puts the 'Monty Python' foot to shame. Global Warming is our main focus, as it happened to cause the Bird Flu to make these birds go mad.

The general plot is one of the most boring, dragged out, and horribly written things you could ever see. A software salesman named Rod (Alan Bagh - whose last name is also a sound that sums up the quality of this movie) meets an aspiring fashion model named Nathalie (Whitney Moore). They start to date and get to know each other, oblivious of strange things happening around them like bad CG bird deaths. Eventually, the new couple find themselves up against a discount Hitchcock scenario involving killer birds who look like... ass, they just look like ass. There's no other way to describe it. Along the way, they rescue two kids, Susan and Tony, who are just kind of there as part of the altruistic hero scenario these characters make for themselves.

The worst things about this movie that made me cringe are actually the biggest things about the movie. For starters, there's the heavy-handed environmental message. This gets so deep that it has Rod talking about buying a hybrid car because of how great it is; a random old scientist explains away why the birds are attacking due to climate change (it's like an Al Gore lecture); and let's not leave out the messages of peace and love, where we have an American soldier who fought in Iraq and wanted to give peace a chance. This comes across as something like a high school project, where the kid has to make a movie about protecting the environment. As a film, it is 'The Room'-level awful for sure.

Another thing bound to get on the viewers' nerves is the screeching of these "eagles". If there was anything that really grated on me, it was the consistency of that noise, combined with almost non-stop gunfire at times. By the way, they never do run out of ammo in this; it's like an early video game... looks a bit like one too, a lot of the time. The way these birds are animated is hilarious. It's a lot like someone found a couple of animated gifs of a birds, and copied and pasted them to the film. To make it even more hilarious, we have the opening attack about half an hour into the movie. It's absolutely out of nowhere. There's peace and quiet, then suddenly there's a bunch of birds making warplane noises and blowing shit up - I'm not kidding.

So, what can one appreciate about this dumpster fire of a movie? Well, it all comes down the following along with the horrendous dialogue. Sometimes it completely contradicts itself; like a kid who apparently loves seaweed but then turns his nose up at it like it's the grossest thing ever. Other times, it points out the obvious. There's a lot of observation from Rod - he's constantly pointing and saying "look" through this in order to move things along. Most of the time, though, especially through that first half hour or so, it's just one long, uninteresting date between Rod and Nathalie where we don't give a flying rat's ass about what they have to say. None of it has to do with anything; you might as well be on your own date while paying close attention to a different couple the whole time.

With all of that, there's still so much more to talk about, but we can't be here all day either. The bottom line is that this is a fantastic place to look for a movie that's "so bad it's good". It's the nitty-gritty, low budget, awful but hilarious kind of film. The production value is that of a workplace training video, and you'll find yourself laughing out loud for all of the wrong reasons. It can currently be located on Amazon Prime (Canada), but if you want to have a really fun time, you might wanna check out the Rifftrax version, which can also be found there. If you're looking to throw your brain out the window for a couple of hours, look no further than 'Birdemic: Shock and Terror'.... it even got a sequel I may have to throw on the poll some day.

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