Birdemic, created by James Nguyen |
Birdemic was written, directed, and produced by James Nguyen.Nguyen had made remarks on how films such as The Birds and An Inconvenient Truth inspired him to make this film. Now to be fair this movie had no support from any studio and on a budget of $10,000. But literally anyone could have made anything with that budget and it would have been better than Birdemic. This film is suppose to be a suspenseful romance with a hard hitting environmental message. Did it succeed? Despite being an awful movie? No. It's to hard to even watch and take in any message or plot because of all distractions you see on screen. One of the biggest problems was the acting. We've all seen bad acting, you know it when you see it. But Alan Bagh, the main character is in a league of his own. This man possess an incredible talent, something I did not think was possible. He is capable of showing absolutely on emotion or effort all of the time. This man has less expression than the terminator, I don't know how he does it. But then again every actor in the movie is going with the same approach. They might as well be reading off their script on camera, maybe they were! The astounding thing is how Nguyen had to have watched this and said "Perfect, great, they'll love it". There is a really nice Mustang in the movie so they must have spent the budget on that and not saved any for acting, cause who cares? Right? There's at least decent editing and cinematography right? Nope.
Do you know what a pan is? In the movie business it's when the camera moves across the screen from left to right or vice versa. Typically you'd do this to give a shot a more dynamic feel rather than just letting the camera sit still. Well the Nguyen knows this better than anyone on the planet, this man must have set the record for most pans ever. Every single shot the camera is moving and most of the time what's actually happening on screen is incredibly boring. There are just shots of buildings and roads and people that go on forever with no purpose, but if you add a pan it's exciting right? NO! IT's NOT! If you have a shot of a guy walking for twenty seconds for no reason, adding a pan won't suddenly make it into a nice shot. The whole film is boring to look at, and the audio. THE AUDIO. It cut's out, it becomes quiet, loud, fuzzy. The audio is more dynamic than the movie and that is not a good thing. I mean the very first line is a perfect example of this. It's a waitress saying "Hi", that's it. You know how it sounds? It sounds like a blender being thrown at a chalkboard that results in pure noise, she might of well said "HRIGHYUGRFTYR" because no one can actual tell what she's saying, it just hurts your ears. Forget it, it's fine, as long as the film has a decent plot and is interesting. But it's Birdemic so... it has neither.
This is the worst way to spend and hour and a half, because for most of it, nothing is happening. No suspense. No build up. Nothing. For the first 45 minutes you just follow the worst thing ever (Alan Bagh) as he just goes through his day. You watch him sit in traffic, drive around town, go to work, sit at home and meet a girl he knew in high school who becomes the romantic interest (By the way, the whole romantic subplot is about as interesting as watching paint dry, there is literally no reason to care whatsoever). While all these boring events unfold you are constantly bombarded by general statements along the line of "pollution is bad", "we need clean energy", "global warming". These are all important points but the movie is so dull that you will be too busy thinking of anything else to even care. Oh remember how this movie had a very little budget? Well a great example is how the two love "birds" go to a halloween festival (The Half Moon Bay Pumpkin festival) where there are many extras and convincing sets. Then you realize this isn't a set. They actually went to this real festival in some small town and just filmed the main characters looking at stuff. That's it. It's very bad. I can't believe how boring it is. You want an idea? Here is a scene where the two main characters talk on the phone.
Oh I almost forgot. THE BIRDS. This movie is called Birdemic and for the first half of the movie there are no birds and no foreshadowing of there ever being birds. But then a miracle, birds show up. Half way through the movie clip art birds using the same audio track for screeching appear and start attacking the town. But these birds mean business. The birds make airplane noises and explode when they fly into things... I can't... I just can't... No, I'll keep going, I'll manage. So the birds attack our group of heroes and they fight them off. With coat hangers... I can't...
[MAJOR SPOILERS!!!] You shouldn't really care though.
So then they run away and stuff happens. Some people die, they find children, they have a picnic, a guy threatens to pay for their gasoline (A man holds them at gunpoint and threatens TO BUY GAS FROM THEM, times are rough). The birds are explained by saying "It's Global Warming" and that's about it. They then go to a beach and watch as the birds leave. However this scene is the worst. You have finally reached the end, the birds are leaving for no reason, the "heroes" are alive and the movie does something of pure evil. You sit there watching the actors watch the clip art birds leave for like two full minutes. Nothing happens. But then the credits roll over that same scene after the that time has elapsed. There was no reason the credits shouldn't have started earlier. The only thing you get for watching those previous two minutes of nothing is the self hatred for making your self watch this. the point I'm making is that it's a bad movie. The worst. End of discussion.
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