Birdemic: Shock and Terror begs to be judged on the compellingness of its awfulness — if not by its creator, James Nguyen, then by its distributor. So here goes.
It scores in that Nguyen (a software salesman) meant his awkward no-budget feature to be a sincere homage to Hitchcock’s The Birds. He was either foolish or bold in drawing out to excruciating length the romance between a technology entrepreneur and a model. (The dating scenes have great bad dialogue and blatant promos for local businesses.) Birdemic’s money shot comes when computer-animated birds — seemingly lifted from a video game — “attack” (okay, hover near) the panicking humans. Leading lady Whitney Moore gets no points for charisma, but there’s compensation in co-star Alan Bagh, who’s like a numb John Krasinski.
It’s a nice touch that the speech in which an ornithologist explains how this is all the result of global warming is almost drowned out by wind noise. Verdict: not a classic, but not-bad bad.
Editor's Note: In a previous version of this review, this film was misidentified as "Birdemic: Shock and Awe."
