Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010), Reviewed as the Nature Film It Believes It Is

Somewhere around 45 minutes into Birdemic: Shock and Terror, a flock of eagles attacks a gas station and the gas station explodes. The eagles are clip-art. They do not flap so much as rotate, hanging in the air like screensavers with a grudge, and several of them make dive-bomber noises sourced, as far as anyone can tell, from a World War II film. It is one of the greatest scenes ever committed to whatever Birdemic was committed to. We have watched it eleven times.

The Vision

Director James Nguyen, a software salesman from Silicon Valley, loves Alfred Hitchcock. He loves The Birds specifically, and he set out to honour it with a self-funded romantic thriller shot on weekends for a reported budget of under $10,000. The first half is the romance. Software salesman Rod courts fashion model Nathalie through scenes paced like security footage, including a full uninterrupted minute of his car driving, a round of applause for a business meeting, and a date at a Vietnamese restaurant where the audio changes acoustics every time the camera angle does. The birds themselves arrive at the halfway mark, without warning and without ever being explained by anyone qualified.

The Attack of the GIFs

Once the eagles show up, Birdemic becomes an action film starring people who have clearly been told the birds will be added later. The cast swat at empty air with coat hangers. Actual wire coat hangers, deployed as anti-eagle weaponry with total commitment, in a scene that has since become the film’s calling card. Our heroes rescue two children, buy fish from a man on a beach, and receive a lecture about global warming from a hermit called Tree Hugger, because the film is also an environmental warning. The birds, a scientist eventually explains, have been driven mad by climate change. The scientist delivers this from a footbridge and is never seen again.

An Honest Accounting

Whitney Moore, who plays Nathalie, is visibly a real actor trapped in the wrong dimension and has been a genuinely good sport about the whole thing ever since. Alan Bagh, as Rod, walks like a man hearing instructions through an earpiece with a two-second delay. Severin Films picked the movie up for distribution after its legend spread through midnight screenings in 2010, the RiffTrax crew gave it their full treatment, and Nguyen has since made two sequels, both of which exist. That sentence is the review of the sequels.

Where to Experience It

The specialists at Worst Movies Ever Made covered Birdemic back in 2012 and their verdict has aged like the film’s special effects, which is to say perfectly. The movie circulates on free streaming services most months, the Blu-ray runs about $15, and the RiffTrax version is the recommended entry point for anyone nervous about going in alone. Watch it with friends. Watch it with coat hangers within reach. And when the eagles start rotating toward the gas station, remember that somebody looked at that footage and said yes, that is the take, print it. That person believed. Honestly, Marvel wishes it had this kind of conviction.