Jesus Christ almighty, I have no clue where to begin with this film. Should I call it a film? Should I call it a practical joke on the movie industry? Who knows anymore where the line is between fun, hobby filmmaking and absolute shit shows. Birdemic: Shock and Terror describes exactly how I felt sitting through this almost two hour piece of garbage: shock and terror. Shock that anyone on the crew of this film would allow it to be released and terror that it even was. This movie is so confusing, disgusting, and absolutely awful in all aspects. This movie makes The Room look Oscar-worthy. And at least The Room had a plot with actors who knew what they had got themselves into. I'm not entirely convinced that the cast of this film were aware they were shooting a movie instead of playing make-believe. Anyways, I digress, but this movie is just a pure piece of filth.
Now that I've settled down a touch, let's begin with the cast and performances. I have never seen such awful performances in my life, and I've seen Tommy Wiseau's acting. I can not recall what any of the characters' names are, and I'm not going to waste my time by looking them up on IMDB either because they do not deserve it. The cast was so lost in all of the scenes, and I am positive that they sent out a Craigslist ad looking for actors and picked the first person who would respond. There was absolutely no emotion behind any of the actors or actresses, and I felt so disconnected from anything that happened as a result. I just can't fathom how horrendous the performances were, and I'm just going to leave it at this: don't watch this film.
Now for the fun part: the plot! But wait, you may ask, "Carson, was there even a plot?" And to that I would respond: absolutely fucking not! This film might have been slightly bearable if there was even a taste of what was going through the characters' heads and why they did what they did. No motivations, no reasons for action, no anything. Things just seemed to happen in this film, and I did not understand any of it. One of the most confusing aspects was how they set up the typical three-act structure. It was really only two acts, and the first act attempting to introduce the characters lasted about 50 minutes (keep in mind that the film is about 90 minutes). And try to ignore the extended and misleading "sex" scene, for your own sake. The biggest problem was that there was not a touch of foreshadowing or hint that the movie was about birds attacking a city until the sudden scene where they were dive-bombing a gas station. If there was even one person on the crew who cared just a tiny bit about this film, it might have been infinitely times better. And besides the fact that it's really just a blatant rip-off of The Birds, there was nothing innovative or original about this film at all. So, let me make this clear again: don't watch this film.
I'm not certain whether I should give James Nguyen the pleasure of being called a visionary director, let alone director. I would prefer he be called a "loose supervisor." And even with that title, it does not fit him well. Every small aspect of this film is ridiculous, and I just can't get over how it was even made. The camera and audio were not synced up, and the editing was done in an hour max, probably with iMovie. The "special effects" were just Google images of birds copy and pasted onto the shots and it was unbearable. The only credit I'm giving to Nguyen is that he was able to muster up some people to attempt to make this. It's inspiring that he was able to find anyone. Even then, there was no effort to make this film look remotely presentable, and it's a miracle that I could even find this film online to watch. I paid $4.99 to rent this film, and I think my money could have been spent better on spoons so I could physically scoop my own eyeballs out of my skull.
If you've made it this far in my review, I congratulate you. If you're still reading this, I would like to tell you one thing before you leave, and that is to NOT SEE THIS MOVIE. Do yourself a favor and jab a pitchfork in your brain because that would feel better than having to watch the pathetic excuse for cinema called Birdemic again.
My Rating: ½
No comments:
Post a Comment