Birdemic!

I have reviewed a number of terrible films in my time--with one taking particular precedence over others in the scale of one to awful--but we have a new contender in the category of "worst ever". Last night, I had the pleasure of watching "Birdemic: Shock and Terror".

Now, when you first hear the word "Birdemic" you may be thinking that you're about to see an homage to Hitchcock, and with the improvements on special effects over the past fifty years it should be better than ever. You might expect some clever writing, competent acting, and direction that keeps you in the story and at the edge of your seat at the same time.

What you get instead is a disaster that appears to have cost about the same amount as some kid could make in a summer job delivering newspapers. The film takes about 45 minutes to get to the real story, instead building up this stalker-esque "romance" between the two leads, with dialogue that appears to have been read directly off of note cards on the very first take. While this couple meets, dates, and ends up in bed together fully clothed, there are cuts to a newscaster who appears to be working in a studio our of 1970s Russia, who constantly reports on effects of global warming. See, in case you're not very bright--and therefore the target audience for "Birdemic"--you might miss the subtle as a sledgehammer allusion to the fact that the impending bird attacks are caused by global warming. Why Al Gore left this film out of his own presentation is anyone's guess.

So just when you're about to shut off the TV due to really not giving a rat's ass about the lead couple, the birds begin attacking. How do you know they're attacking? Well, first you hear screeching in the distance, and then you see some cartoon birds superimposed on the film and the "actors" trying to react to these things. Here's some clips. Try not to be scared.

What could be scarier than being attacked by cartoon birds? Oh, I don't know, maybe ANYTHING??? What baffles me is that James Nguyen, the "director" (which somehow implies that he's responsible for this mess) tried to play this off as a straight horror film. He might have been better off just pretending that these were invisible birds, rather than hoping that animated birds were going to scare his audience. The only thing missing was a statement at the end of the film that says "no cartoon birds were hurt while making this picture".

Even scarier? There's apparently a sequel.