Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Microreview [film]: Birdemic: Shock and Terror!


The Meat

How bad is this movie? Let me put it this way: If I had the option of a) being strapped to a chair and made to watch Manos: Hands of Fate repeatedly while being force-fed Funyuns and Big Red for an entire day, or b) watching Birdemic: Shock and Terror just once more, then you'd be sizing me up for a bib and wrist restraints.

Ostensibly, this is the story of a bunch of eagles and vultures that attack Half Moon Bay, California. Or more specifically, that attack the nine people in this movie, who are in Half Moon Bay. Everyone else seems to drive past and live their lives in relative ease, given the ongoing bird attack and global warming epidemic, which is repeatedly referenced. See, for the first 46 minutes, this is a series of largely unconnected scenes about literally nothing. Then at minute 47, exploding eagles arrive apropos of nothing, and the movie becomes a series of largely unconnected scenes about the maybe nine people imperiled by this bird attack.

This movie made me rethink my love for bad movies. And I've enjoyed many of the worst movies ever made. You can feel free to tell me in the comments why I missed the point or whatever, but I will expand on the value of cult cinema in a subsequent post, and for my money, even as cult cinema, Birdemic: Shock and Terror misses the mark. It may legitimately be the worst movie ever made and released in public. I'm sure far worse movies have been attempted and aborted somewhere along the line.

The Math

Objective Quality: 1/10

Bonuses: +1 for Whitney Moore, because a beautiful girl in both her underwear and a terrible movie is still a beautiful girl in her underwear; +1 for Becky getting killed while taking a dump in the underbrush (bird attacks render indoor plumbing useless).

Penalties: -1 for the worst CGI in the history of ever; -1 for literally every other single thing in this movie.

Cult Movie Coefficient: 1/10. Prosecutable as crime against humanity.

[See explanation of our non-inflated scores here.]