The birds are back in this incredibly awful and frequently hilarious sequel to the WTF classic, Birdemic.
I knew I was in for a good time when the film opened with a five-minute long sequence of our hero Bill (Thomas Favaloro) casually walking down Hollywood Boulevard. He’s a producer who’s casting a movie and turns to the hero from the first flick, Rod (Alan Bagh) to finance his dream project. Naturally, they decide to cast their girlfriends in the movie. All is going swimmingly when a red rain descends on Hollywood. The precipitation soaks into the La Brea Tar Pits, resurrecting flocks of killer prehistoric birds who rise out of the muck and converge on Hollywood, pecking and killing everyone in sight. Our heroes must band together once more, pistols and clothes hangers in hand to fend off the undead bird menace.
Both Birdemic movies have been about wildly successfully and blissfully dumb white people being wildly successful, blissfully dumb, and incredibly white for no reason whatsoever for about half the running time. I’m not sure if this is some sort of social commentary on writer/director James Nguyen’s part or not. Either that or he’s just too lazy to think up any problems, drama, or obstacles to put in front of them, except for the killer birds, of course. At any rate, the scenes of the character acting awfully white are downright hysterical as the acting and dialogue often exceeds the jaw-dropping idiocy of the original film.
Yes, all the stuff you loved about the first movie crops up again. Awkward love scenes in which the participants keep their underwear and pants on? Check. Random dance sequences? Got ‘em. Editing that starts to fade in or out and then doesn’t at the last second? You bet. Passionate speeches about global warming? Uh-huh. (Tree Hugger Guy returns!)
There are also new elements here that help to increase the hilarity. Like the fact that not only are birds attacking this time around, but also cavemen and zombies. What makes the zombie attack scene so funny is that they emerge from their graves wearing jeans and T-shirts. I mean, shouldn’t they have been buried in… you know… a suit and tie? But by far the funniest sequence is when our heroes band together and look for survivors. They cruise around the city checking the pulse of EVERY SINGLE body they come across before solemnly announcing, “He’s dead.” It was funny the first time it happened. It was gut-busting the tenth time. By the fifteenth time, I was wiping tears of laughter out of my eyes.
And what would a Birdemic movie be without horrible special effects? In addition to the shitty CGI birds, we also get a laughably bad CGI jellyfish attack. That’s pretty funny on its own merits, but hearing the characters alliteratively refer to it as a “giant jumbo jellyfish” over and over again in like, the span of a minute is fucking hysterical. The truly perplexing addition of a crappy CGI ambulance that drives off at the end of the scene is the perfect cherry on top of what was already an absolutely bonkers sequence.
Once again, Nguyen has made a movie that is distinctly his own. He really put his heart and soul into this thing and we as a moviegoing audience are all the better for it. Because his heartfelt sincerity is felt in every scene, the sequel blissfully contains the same Ed Wood-type vibe that made Birdemic a camp classic. (There’s also a scene where characters drive around Hollywood and their sunglasses disappear and reappear within alternating shots, which I’m sure would’ve made Wood envious.)
Probably the most amazing thing about the movie is they actually got permission to film inside Universal Studios. (At the now defunct Jaws ride, no less.) The best part is when the bird battle is over, the characters conduct a monotone discussion about the Jaws franchise. I love it.
This is one sequel that surpasses the original. It's rare when it happens, but you love to see it when it does. Oh, and by “surpasses the original”, I mean, “it’s even more gloriously stupid and jaw-droppingly unhinged”.
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