Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010)

There was an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called Skin of Evil, in which a race had taken all of their worst qualities and made a separate, sentient being out of them.  Armus was the worst that that species had going for them.  I think Birdemic is cinematic equivalent of Armus.  It’s as if someone took all the worst attributes of every other film and combined them into a single horrible thing.

The movie starts with Rod driving around town.  While stopping for lunch, he meets Nathalie.  (Specifically, he checks her out as she walks out, then catches up with her.)  They used to go to school back in the day.  He’s now a salesman who closes million-dollar deals and has stock options.  She’s a model who just landed a shoot for Victoria’s Secret.

It takes the entire first half of the movie for them to get together.  They go to dinner together.  They go to some sort of pumpkin festival.  He even meets her mother.  They finally find their way to a motel room.

This where the birdemic begins.  Several birds start dive-bombing the cars in the parking lot.  Rod and Nathalie meet Ramsey and Becky, who are also guests at the motel.  Everyone keeps calling the birds eagles, even though they look more like vultures.

The four of them escape in Ramsey’s van.  Along the way, they pick up two orphans.  This part of the movie is just the group running away from the exploding birds.  They occasionally meet people, who are there to either take advantage of them or offer some theory on why this is happening.

The movie ends when some doves come over and magically get the eagles to stop their attacks.  I’d say that the birds fly off into the sunset, but they don’t.  They spend several minutes just hovering there.  Birds can do that in this movie.  They can hover by flapping their wings once every few seconds.  Of course, if they can explode on impact, hovering isn’t that unbelievable.

I really think that very minimal effort was put into this.  IMDb estimates the budget at $10,000.  That’s not a misprint.  It’s not $10,000,000.  They spent $10,000 on everything.  This might explain why they use a van with the paint peeling off.  I’m not sure if this includes the actors’ pay.  It’s also possible that they weren’t paid.  The acting was stiff and choppy.  It was almost as if they had just gotten the script the day before and had just enough time to memorize the lines.

Many of the scenes are overdone or unnecessary.  When Rod finally gets his stock options, we’re treated to a few minutes of the employees clapping and congratulating each other.  There’s another scene in which Rod buys solar panels.  I think the only reason this exists is to promte the idea of spending $2000 on green technology.

I may have already mentioned how bad the CGI is.  I think they used the same vulture for all of the birds.  The same could be said of the doves.  It looked like it was the same animation, offset by a second or two to make it less obvious.

Shock and Terror is the perfect subtitle for this movie.  It’s shocking how terrible it is.  It’s so bad that you’ll be in terror as you watch it.  There are no good parts.  There are no redeeming qualities.  Consider that the movie lists “Supporting Casts” in the opening credits.  This movie deserves to be on IMDb’s bottom 100 list.

IMDb page