Birdemic Screeching In As Our First

Being a movie fan usually means you develop a sense of taste and refinement, making one harder to please as a viewer. And, while this is true, there are movies that defy that. I don’t mean guilty pleasures, nor movies warped by nostalgia goggles or rose-tinted glasses, but movies so terrible and yet enjoyable because of their terribleness.

You’ve likely heard of The Room thanks to the recent The Disaster Artist film, but, that’s only one of the bad movies the internet loves to mess with.

And, for some possibly worrying reason, I’ve made my way through some of the worst. Furthermore, in these masochistic travels, I’ve learned there are two rules for how to make a so-bad-it’s-good film:

1. The creator(s) must have barely any skill at all.
2. The creator(s) must be unaware of this and think they are a genius.

The comedy comes from the self-seriousness, or the wholehearted commitment to ideas anyone could see was terrible but the creator(s).

These movies are the film version of a person who wants to lick a cactus.

And, to start off this periodic series, I present a movie that licked one too many cactuses: Birdemic: Shock and Terror.

Now, a fair warning if you seek Birdemic out, this movie hurts. You will laugh—but hurt. I have never seen a film that made me actively want to punch myself in the face not hyperbolically, but here we are.

It takes forever for the movie to start—it’s all a driving scene up to that point. And when the main guy does exit his car…it only gets worse.

The Escalating Horror Of Birdemic: Sitting Through It

The characters are a nightmarish combination of someone’s power fantasies and poorly researched ideas of what a human is. NO ONE ACTS LIKE A PERSON. People contradict their own logic, break into soapbox rants, and make fortunes or have huge sweeping positive life changes with barely any shown input from them. And the dialogue is just…I can’t even fathom the logic—and that’s when I can hear what they are freakin’ saying.

Because the truly awful part of Birdemic is the construction of it. If you thought amateur home movies were bad, this makes them look like masterclasses on sound design. Audio. Does. Not. Work. In. This. Movie. It’s like being on an airplane and having your ears repeatedly pop.

Repeatedly, as in every thirty seconds.

And the birds themselves tie the bow on this madness. Special effects made of cardboard would have been better than these things—at least they would have been in the scene and not superimposed over the footage with barebones animation cycles that will make you question your faith in the worthwhileness of art.

But back to sound. The birds make this constant screaming. That, specifically, is what induces the willing want of self-punching. It may drive a person mad.

Birdemic Breaks New Bounds Of Terribleness–And Eardrums

Birdemic is a movie too long: it should have been five minutes. That would have made it into perhaps the best horror comedy ever presented to the willing eye. However, as it is, Birdemic may be the actual worst movie of all time.

I don’t think I’ll find anything that will ever top it.

But I’m willing to look.

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