Movie Review: Birdemic: Shock and Terror

This movie surprised me. If you've seen Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds you know the basic premise (and if you haven't seen The Birds, what the hell man? Go watch it.) But back to Birdemic. Written, directed, and produced by James Nguyen, the easiest way to describe this movie is as a film-school remake of The Birds hammered together with a romcom.

Production values on Birdemic are looooooooooooooooow. The acting is downright awful to the point that Kristen Stewart would seem oscar worthy by comparison. The cinematography is all but non-existent with the majority of outdoor shots being completely overxposed with all highlights being blown to smitherines. The audio is all over the place, from what I suspect was purely on-camera microphones the entire time. The editing is jumpy and hinders the flow of the movie quite a bit. And most importantly, the special effects. Oh god, the special effects. What comes to mind on the special effects is mid-nineties clip-art. The titular birds are literally copypasta, all performing the same stock motions on infinite loop. The fire that appears quite a bit is glorious in its three color, 8-bit style. The effects, despite their sillyness do compare well to those used on Hitckcock's film, as that film used a similar technique of overlaying the bird footage over the regular film. I'm not sure if this is actually an homage to Hitchcock, or just cheap production.

With a production budget of just $10,000 one must ask oneself, how the hell did they manage to spend $10,000 on this movie? My suspicions would suggest it was spent mostly on locations and fuel costs, but that's purely speculative on my part.

All this being said, I enjoyed the movie. Despite all its many many many flaws, it's very charming. Even with their wooden performances, the characters are compelling and relatable. If you've got 90 minutes to kill and are up for a bad movie, definitely check it out.

As always if you have a movie you want me to review, or are skeptical about watching something on Netflix, leave a comment and maybe I'll watch and review it for you.