Birdemic: Shock and Terror

Birdemic: Shock and Terror is the newest of the films that I will be watching having come out in 2009. Given this it was amazing how the special effects were worse than those in the 1990 film Troll 2, much worse. Birdemic was written and directed by James Nguyen, a Silicon Valley software salesman whose family fled Vietnam in 1975 before the fall of Saigon and grew up in the United States. Nguyen never attended film school or got any formal training, if you can believe that, and spent 10,000 and seven months worth of weekends to make this. Nguyen was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds and tells the story of a software salesman from Silicon Valley, Rod, who begins dating a fashion model, Nathalie. Then flocks of eagles and vultures attack the town that spit acid and explode on impact with the ground.

    As I am sure you are I was very excited to see this happen. You might be surprised that there are no birds in the entire first half of the film. No Nguyen decided that the first half should be specifically for developing the characters and relationship between Rod and Nathalie. This wouldn't be too bad if this had actually happened though. Rod acts more like a robot than a human, neither have any personality, and half of the scenes are completely unnecessary. One scene just shows Rod driving to work and sitting in traffic, for over a minute. There are scenes throughout the film that are just panoramic shots of northern California for over a minute with just birds screeching playing in the background. 
       You will never understand how important music is in films until you hear the deafening silence that shows up in Birdemic. Nguyen must have been trying to do what Hitchcock did in the Birds. Hitchcock used no score, but instead he used sound effects. In a meeting with Even Hunter, the original screenwriter for the Birds , Hitchcock argued against using music saying that it would diminish from the terror of the birds(Documentary: All About The Birds). Nguyen fails to do this leaving huge gaps of awkward silence throughout the film.
        Birdemic began to pick up a cult following after Nguyen brought it to the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. He was not invited to come, but showed up anyway and promoted his movie by driving around with a huge fake eagle and fake blood covering his car and showing the film in local bars. Nguyen was able to achieve such a level of terribleness with this movie that it just has to been seen to be understood. With acting worse than the average persons ability, special affects so bad that a high-school student could make them on paint, and a story written at a middle school level, you will have trouble watching this movie even while making fun of it. Birdemic really shows that just because you love films doesn't mean that you can make them.