Question: Are you a nerd?
Question: Do you miss MST3K?
Question: Have you ever read slush, or other reallllly bad stories?
Question: Do you like the Tim and Eric show?
Question: Do you live in the Bay Area?
Question: Do you have Netflix?
If you answered yes to some of the above….boy do i have a movie for you!
I had a long four days at work with some seriously critical patients and being in charge, and today was my husband’s bday, but he was wiped out from working all weekend, so we decided to stay in tonight and get take out and watch movies with our housemates.
The movie we watched was Birdemic: Shock and Terror.
I can safely say this is the worst film I’ve ever seen. The pacing was awful — there were long shots of people walking, or driving places. The plot (which we’ll get more into) was sketchy at its best moments. The acting was wooden and forced. The CGI was impossibly bad.
And it was hilarious. Unintentionally so, but it was the funniest fucking thing I’ve seen all year.
The plot is vaguely that global warming has destroyed the ecosystem and so birds — eagles and vultures specifically — have come in to wreak their horrible vengence. You don’t see them through for about the first half of the movie, which is focused on building up the relationship between a Software Engineer/Marketer/Venture Capitalist (yes, he’s all of those things at the same time) and a Fashion Model.
He makes “million dollar sales!” and she “just got a cover for Victoria Secret!” These things despite the fact that her modeling agency and his work cubical are clearly the same place, only with different pictures on the walls. She does her fashion model photoshoots at….a 1 hr photo booth store. How do I know this? The loving establishing shot.
His company gets sold to Oracle, and he becomes a millionaire, and so he starts a nanotech solar panel business where he also makes Huge Sales! (There’s a lot of eco-drama in this film — about once every 20 minutes, the action, if it can be called that, stops so that an actor can read a wikipedia entry. Ice cap melting, electric cars, the works.)
For some unexplained reason, the protag’s best friend is a douche (don’t worry, he dies) and his girlfriend wears a shirt that says “Imagine Peace” at all times — also, they have simulated sex (it’s not even softcore) in front of an www.imaginepeace.com sign.
Everyone needs to talk to each other about their hopes and dreams, their wants and fears — it’s all so cheesily trite and stupid, it’s hilarious. “Hi, Mom! Everyone, meet my mom for this one shot. She’s a Virgo, and she likes the color blue! Bye, Mom!”
Just when the endless establishing shots of Half Moon Bay, one of the least attractive towns in the Bay Area, the plot that’s just killing time, and the eye-meltingly bad acting begins to wear thin, the protags sleep together….and the BIRDS ATTACK.
And not just any birds. But the worst CGI I think I’ve ever seen before birds. It’s like the intentionally shitty CGI in Tim and Eric, when they reach the end of a short comedy bit and then just blow shit up. It’s just like that. The birds corner them, and start — in a completely unexamined, and unexplained way — blowing up cars and gas tanks. (They sound like Japanese Zeros. Why? Also unknown.) They disrupt the cell service, so no one can call home.Eventually they somehow start to vomit poison on people.
So any time the protags are outside, silly birds are chasing them, and killing people, by slitting their throats with their horrible birdy-claws. There’s even a scene where someone has to wander off to go to the bathroom, and SWOOPING DEATH ATTACK, and then they die. Oh, if only they hadn’t gone so far away from the car to take a poo!
Eventually the birds run their course — there’s shooting guns with endless ammo first, incongruous backgrounds where civilization as we know it clearly is continuing on, blissfully unaware of the bird attacks — and they run into the woods for one final eco-narration scene with a woodsman, who might also be a pedophile.
Then, and only then, do doves — I shit you not, doves — swoop in and chase the mean birds away.
Did i mention that this film was filmed without sound? Whoever did it couldn’t afford the cameras with the booms…so everyone in this film went in later to read their lines after the fact, ineptly. So in addition to everything else that’s gloriously lame, the entire film is old timey kung-fu dubbed, despite the fact that everyone’s clearly speaking English.
Anyhow, I really needed a good laugh after this past weekend, and Birdemic delivered. I’m sure it’ll amuse some of y’all as well. Watch it with friends (or while high) and you’ll laugh your ass off.