Devil (2010)

Tags

2010, Bojana Novakovic, Bokeem Woodbine, Chris Messina, Devil, Geoffrey Arend, Horror, Jenny O'Hara, M. Night Shyamalan, Movie, Suspense

Do you copy?  Hello?  Am I speaking to the devil…?  Over.

They say the devil is in the details, but…apparently the devil is actually in the elevator.

This M. Night Shyamalan written (and thankfully not directed), claustrophobic, light horror movie is actually fairly effective for the most part, though not really at being overly scary.  It’s more effective as a whodunit…or, whothedevil?

Thanks to some unnecessary narration, we know that the devil has decided to take human form and punish some people in an elevator.  What we don’t know is which of the five people on board the elevator is secretly the Prince of Lies.  Meanwhile, at a security desk, Detective Bowden (Chris Messina) is watching everything over a video camera and wondering what the heck is going on.

I’ve been debating with myself on this one as to whether or not it would be more effective if somehow the audience point of view never left the elevator.  Would it have felt more claustrophobic that way?  Long ago I did another trapped-in-an-elevator movie called Blackout that spent even more time inside the lift, and it didn’t effectively create much claustrophobia either, so…maybe I’m just not scared of getting stuck in an elevator.  Anyway, I actually like the bigger scope of the movie, as it includes several other characters being affected by what’s going on.  It felt more real to have police involved, a mechanic, security guards, etc.

Not a bad comeback effort from the guy that has been on a pretty big Hollywood losing streak.  Maybe writing and not directing is the winning formula for ol’ M. Night.  Believe it or not, I’m rooting for him to regain his former glory.  I liked his first few movies, even the Village, but everything since, not so much.

The Conjuring (2013)

Tags

Horror, Lili Taylor, Movie, Patrick Wilson, Ron Livingston, The Conjuring, Vera Farmiga

I know, you’re wondering why anyone would make such a creepy doll in the first place, right? Yeah, I get that a lot…

I wonder how much my ratings of horror movies depend on what time of day I see them.  I guess if I see one during the day – without the added atmosphere of the night – and it really affects me, that says a lot about how scary/good it was.

Well, I saw this one in the middle of the day, and it didn’t affect me much at all.  That’s not to say it’s a bad movie.  It’s pretty well done…but I’ve seen this well done stuff many times before.  It has most of the same cliches and plot contrivances that most in the genre have.

It looks good, sounds good, is reasonably well acted (particularly by some of the odd kids), and has a creepy moment or two.  Overall, though, it’s not one that will last with me.  It’s just too typical.

Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson are serviceable, Ron Livingston is…there, but it’s Lili Taylor that has to do all the heavy lifting once things start to go really crazy.  I guess the kids pull some weight too.  They have to make you believe they are terrified, and they do a good job.

I don’t have much else to say about this one.  I’ll leave it to Cinema Sins to point out all the little problems with it. It’s fun at times, but I wouldn’t say it was all that scary, and it didn’t leave much of an impression on me.

How about a little innovation in plots, movie makers?  Enough with the evil spirits that go bump, bump, bump in the night.  Enough with the put-upon mother who is always the object of torment.  Enough with the creepy kids.  Enough with the experts setting up cameras and other ghost hunter equipment.

I think horror writers should start with a list of things (see above) that can NOT appear in their story, then start building a plot.  Maybe then we can see something new…

6.5/10

The Last Days on Mars (2013)

Tags

Drama, Elias Koteas, Horror, Liev Schreiber, Movie, Romola Garai, Science Fiction, The Last Days on Mars

Hold still, there’s a bug on your face!

Ya know, when I saw a brief description of this one, I was hoping for more of a psychological drama.  Maybe they struggle with whether or not they should go back to Earth, knowing they’re infected with an unknown virus, or something like that.

Nope, just another super-violent-killer-monster movie.

People discover living substance on Mars…living substance infects 2 astronauts…they immediately turn into super strong zombie-like creatures…they attack and infect others…etc etc.  Been done before, you might say.  I wonder if this one started with somebody saying, “how about zombies…ON MARS!”

It has a nice look to it, and the mood of the first 20 minutes or so is effectively creepy I suppose, but by the end of it I felt like I had watched a pretty average B-movie about monsters on Mars.  If you stop and think about it (and you probably shouldn’t), not much in the movie really makes any sense.  Plus, none of the characters are developed to any extent at all, so their fates aren’t of any importance to the viewer.  Well, except for the cute girl I guess.  I was hoping she’d make it.

5.5/10

The Innkeepers (2011)

Tags

Comedy, Horror, Kelly McGillis, Movie, Pat Healy, Sara Paxton, Suspense, The Innkeepers

welcome to the Yankee Pedlar...please don't bother us...

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Sara Paxton, Pat Healy, Kelly McGillis

Luke:  Pessimism is just a higher form of optimism.  If you expect nothing from people, then you go through life being pleasantly surprised.

It’s the last weekend for the Yankee Pedlar Inn.  The hotel is about to close down, and two of its employees have been left to look after it – and its handful of guests.  Claire (Paxton) and Luke (Healy) are geeky friends who share an interest in the paranormal world.  This legendarily haunted hotel might hold a few surprises for them before it sees its last day…

A couple years ago I saw a movie called The House of the Devil.  It was a sort of throwback style horror movie, well directed by a guy named Ti West.  When I noticed his name was attached to another horror movie, The Innkeepers, it caught my attention.

While this movie doesn’t quite achieve as interesting of an atmosphere as The House of the Devil, it still succeeds in being enjoyable for about the same percentage of the movie as that earlier Ti West effort.  Unfortunately, both suffer from weak endings.

The interesting thing about this movie is, I enjoyed it more for the comedy and character development.  Claire and Luke have a good chemistry together, and the humor has a subtle, real feel to it.  They’re likable, relatable characters, which results in greater tension because we actually care about them.  Funny how that works…

I had never heard of Sara Paxton before, but it looks like she’s been around for quite a while, with earlier roles in a lot of kid/teen stuff, but more recently in grown up roles like in The Last House on the Left and Shark Night.  In this movie, she’s kind of a geeky loser who has resigned herself to a life of menial jobs, like the one she currently has at the Yankee Pedlar.  I liked her performance a lot.  It’s different, and in a movie with a story that isn’t exactly original or attention grabbing, you need interesting characters.  Paxton and Pat Healy do a nice job of creating those characters.

Less interesting is Kelly McGillis as an aging actress who has turned to the world of spiritual healing.  She has a few good moments, but seems more like just a plot convenience than a fully formed character.

My main complaint about the movie would be that at the end, I was left thinking, “…that’s it?”  There’s not much closure or resolution to this one.  It’s simply a haunted house story with more laughs (intentional, thankfully) than scares.  It almost feels like a case where there was a more complex original ending that didn’t make it to the final film.  Instead, they just went with something simple, and almost completely unsatisfying.  Which is a shame because much of the film leading up to that had me interested in where it was going.

Oh well, at least I got to see Sara Paxton be cute and goofy for an hour and a half…

Don’t go in the basement…

10 – 2 because the ending just felt so unsatisfying – .8 for the general story being pretty uninspired – .7 for lacking quality character development outside of the main two characters = 6.5

Insidious (2010)

Tags

Angus Sampson, Barbara Hershey, Drama, Horror, Insidious, Leigh Whannell, Lin Shaye, Movie, Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Ty Simpkins

I don't want to alarm you, but there's a Star Wars geek behind you dressed up as Darth Maul or something...

PG-13

Rose Byrne, Patrick Wilson, Ty Simpkins, Lin Shaye, Barbara Hershey, Leigh Whannell, Angus Sampson

Josh:  First line of a joke, right?  Guy comes home and finds his wife with a priest?

Not long after moving into a new house, a family starts experiencing strange phenomenon.  After young Dalton (Simpkins) slips into some sort of mysterious coma, the odd occurrences begin to escalate.

For this review, I did something that I did before with Iron Man 2.  I just wrote down my thoughts as I watched the movie.  I tried to keep it spoiler free, but there’s probably some story elements revealed along the way, so read at your own risk.  Not that there’s much to spoil in this movie…

Without FURTHER ado…

Okay, creepy-ish face right from the get-go…not bad.

Ah, Rose Byrne…I do love me some Rose Byrne…

And now she’s singing!

Only in the movies do kids go exploring dark attics right after doors mysteriously open by themselves.

I like that the parents seem nice and get along.

Was I supposed to see something outside that window??  What were we focusing on there…?

Bad acting, doc, bad acting.

See, this is why I would never want a baby monitor.  If it’s not picking up aliens, it’s picking up ghostly voices.

Yeah kid, I’d be a little scared of your comatose brother walking around at night too.

They have the creakiest creaky wood floors ever!

Okay, this is officially enough weird stuff happening to warrant moving out of the house immediately.

Please tell me they at least called the police after all of that!

Aaaaaand, they’re still in the house.

Oh boy, here we go…same ol’ plot device…the wife/mom is always the one who knows something strange is afoot, while the husband doubts it and/or doesn’t want to deal with it.

Uh oh, he said the F word.

Yay, they’re leaving the house!  ‘Bout time.  But I’m guessing moving doesn’t help.  Not against…Insidious!

Tiny Tim music?  Okay, that IS frightening.

Creepy kids running about?  Time to try a hotel maybe?

Who is this lady?

Uh oh, Specs and Tucker…the comedy relief paranormal investigators!  Let the funny begin!

It’s funny ’cause they’re geeks and they like Star Trek and stuff…

Seriously, can Insidious go ahead and kill them now?

Ooooh, that other lady is Patrick Wilson’s mother…I should have figured that out.

Elise has arrived!  I can’t wait for the part where she declares “this house is clean.”

The Further?  What the WHAT??

Way to astro-travel, Dalton, sheesh.

“It’s a little unorthodox.”  Ya don’t say…

Here we go again, the dad still doesn’t think anything strange is going on?  What about all the shizz he’s seen go down already??

Oh c’mon movie, you’re better than this.

Okay good, back on track a bit…

Finally, all heck breaks loose!

This has potential…

She’s the Dr. Seuss of psychics.  “Now you’re outside, let my voice be your guide, keep a steady stride…into the Further you go.”

Ugh…did he wander into Disney’s Haunted Mansion?  This is getting silly.

Okay, the train is officially off the tracks.  This has turned laughable.

How did he-…what happened to the-…where did-…what’s going on??

Bad movie!  No!  Bad!  Go to your room!  You sit there and think about what you’ve done!

And don’t come out until you’re ready to apologize!!

Rose Byrne deserves better roles than this…

10 – 1 for recycling so many scary movie cliches and telegraphing most of the scares – 3 for that horrible, awful, silly ending – .4 for kind of not being made all that well (technically speaking) = 5.6

The Descent: Part 2 (2009)

Tags

Anna Skellern, Documentary, Douglas Hodge, Drama, Gavan O'Herlihy, Horror, Josh Dallas, Krysten Cummings, Mark Hogancamp, Marwencol, Movie, Shauna Macdonald, The Descent: Part 2

shhhh! they're about to tell us why we're so well lit...

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Shauna Macdonald, Krysten Cummings, Gavan O’Herlihy, Douglas Hodge, Josh Dallas, Anna Skellern

Sarah: They’re blind…they track sound.  You’re louder.

Sarah (Macdonald), the lone survivor of a caving expedition that was attacked by subterranean creatures, is forced to assist a rescue team search the cave for possible survivors.  This little rescue attempt does not go well.

Throw another one on the pile of unnecessary sequels.

This one is probably a touch better than most uncalled for sequels, but it still reeks of a lame attempt to cash in on the unexpected popularity of the first movie.  Sadly, the writers, and first time Director Jon Harris, didn’t quite understand what made the first movie an enjoyable horror flick.  That movie really gave itself time to develop the characters and create an ominous feeling of the cave closing in around them (and us the audience).  In an odd way – despite what happens to them – the first movie seemed to actually care about the characters.  Part 2 simply reduces them all to ambulatory bags of blood just waiting to be torn apart in creative ways.

The movie opens with one of the most stunningly unbelievable setups I’ve seen in a long time.  Sarah has just been discovered, she’s recovering from her ordeal in the hospital, she has her friends blood on her clothes, and somehow the policeman in charge decides it’s a good idea to drag her back down into the cave?  Don’t question her for more than 30 seconds, don’t do a full investigation or get a psychologist in to talk to her for a while.  Nope, just take the only survivor from the entire party back down in the cave.  Under no circumstances could I ever see this happening.  Ever.  At least when they pulled that stunt in Aliens, Ripley had told her story numerous times and a long time had passed before she went back into the monsters’ lair.

While Part 2 does manage to create some scary caving experiences (the scariest aspect of the first movie), it rushes to get to the monster attacks.  If you like extreme gore, I guess that will make you happy, because the attacks are pretty disgusting.  But it’s all so empty.  Just an exercise in violence and special effects.

I did say this was a touch above most bad sequels, and that’s mostly because of Shauna Macdonald.  She’s still an enjoyable actor to watch, and since she had a lot of character development in the first movie, she’s the only one I felt any connection to.  The caving sequences leading up to the monster attacks are good, and some of the action is alright.  Unfortunately, just when you think it might end on a good note, the movie totally falls off the deep end.  I really disliked the end of this one.  The first movie, depending on what version you saw, ended in a sort of poignantly depressing way.  This movie just left me feeling bad as the credits rolled.

One last thing to note.  The Descent was understandably guilty of having some of the caves lit with an unrealistic amount of light.  I mean, you have to if you want to see anything in a cave.  Part 2 goes overboard with the unrealistic lighting.  Way overboard.  You can see plain as day in some caves where there shouldn’t be a single light source.  Part of what’s scary about being in a cave is how dark it is.

Leave the 10K at home next time guys, okay?

Don’t fire a gun in a cave.

10 – 2 for lack of character development – 1 for a poor ending – 1 for some nonsensical things like well lit caves and blind monsters that hunt above ground all the time = 6.0

The Silent House (2010)

Tags

Abel Tripaldi, Drama, Florencia Colucci, Gustavo Alonso, Horror, Movie, Suspense, The Silent House

heeeerre moths...c'mon...c'mere moths...

This movie is in Spanish, with English subtitles.

R?

Florencia Colucci, Abel Tripaldi, Gustavo Alonso

Laura:  Smile…  SMILE!

Laura (Colucci) and her father, Wilson (Alonso), plan to fix up their old home in order to sell it.  Shortly after arriving there in the evening, Laura begins to hear noises.  Her father goes upstairs to investigate…and then things get scary.

If you’ve read my blog closely over the years, you’ll know that I have a great fondness for Alfred Hitchcock movies, and for those who try to create a tone in their movies that is reminiscent of Hitchcock.  So, when I heard that the interesting thing (or gimmick) about this movie was that it was filmed “in one continuous shot”, like Hitchcock’s Rope was meant to seem to be filmed, I was intrigued.

Unfortunately, there’s not much to this one beyond that gimmick.  And like Rope, I’m sure this movie wasn’t actually filmed all in one shot either.  I haven’t researched that to back up that claim, but there are pretty clear moments where easy edits could be made.

Still, it’s an interesting way to film a movie.  It’s like having your cake and eating it too, in that you can give it a first person, Blair Witch type feel, while also having music and artsy cinematography.  It does make you feel like you’re along for the ride with Laura as she creeps around the dark, creaky house.  But, that also presents a problem, as you start to learn why editing can play such an important role in a movie.  Usually you’ll see somebody start to walk up stairs, then we cut to the top of the stairs as the character reaches the top.  Not here.  In this movie we follow Laura up every step…around every corner…through every door…around every room.  And it grows tiresome.

It grew even more tiresome when, about halfway through, I figured out exactly where the movie was taking me.  At that point, the stuff that is supposed to be tension building just becomes tedious.  Really, there’s only one good scare in the movie, and it’s during another call back to a Hitchcock scene.  This time it’s an homage to the finale of Rear Window.

There just wasn’t enough original content in this one.  It’s well made, and well acted, but aside from the continuous shot idea, everything seems recycled from other movies.  If you’re not going to have anything new, at least try to make the old stuff more exciting.

Just don’t go into old, spooky houses with no electricity.

10 – 2.2 for being so tedious at times – 2 for lack of originality + .1 for the Hitchcock influences = 5.9

Vanishing on 7th Street (2010)

Tags

Drama, Hayden Christensen, Horror, Jacob Latimore, John Leguizamo, Movie, Thandie Newton, Vanishing on 7th Street

it's my lightsaber, see? vvvvvvvvmmmm! vvvvrrraaammm! see?

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Hayden Christensen, Thandie Newton, John Leguizamo, Jacob Latimore

Paul: What, am I…in heaven?
Luke: Better…a bar.

During a blackout, most of the population of Detroit disappears in an instant.  Only those close to a light source at the time are spared, but the survivors must stay in the light, or suffer the same fate as all the others.

Affleck, you da bomb in Phantoms, yo!

Yeah, while I was watching this movie, I kept waiting for Ben Affleck’s Sheriff character from Phantoms to show up because this movie borrows heavily from that one.

Both involve a mass disappearance, references to the legendary “Lost Colony” of Roanoke, a group of characters collected in a small building, and some sort of dark presence seemingly trying to absorb them all into a collective.  Also, both movies aren’t particularly good.

Aside from having a title that sounds like an episode of The Twilight Zone, the main problem with Vanishing on 7th Street is the lack of character development (despite some fairly good, if overly dramatic, acting).  I couldn’t help compare that aspect of the movie to the movie I had watched the day before, Cold Weather.  In that movie, we got a whole lot of time to get to know the main characters before the main plot was really set in motion.  Thus, even though their situation wasn’t nearly as dire as the characters’ situation in this movie, the tension was greater because I actually cared about those characters.  I didn’t even know all the names of the people in this movie until quite a ways in.  I’d say Paul (Leguizamo) gets the most development and depth, but Luke (Christensen) and Rosemary (Newton) hardly even register as characters.  They’re just there to run around and try to avoid the dark shadows closing in on them.

Oh, and they threw in a kid or two just so the audience would have to say, “oh no!  They’re not going to kill off the kid, are they!?”  Child endangerment always ramps up the tension.

So, without any real characters to care about, we at least get some sort of interesting explanation as to what the heck is going on, right?

Nope.  A fairly good set up is wasted.

Now, I’m not one that always needs things wrapped up in a pretty bow, but if you’re going to have your movie plot driven instead of character driven, it would be nice to have at least some amount of closure.  In the end I was just left thinking, “I don’t care about these people, and I don’t know what is happening to them.  Why did I watch this?”

There is some creepy imagery here and there and a somewhat ominous mood set at times, if you’re into that sort of thing, but mostly I was just bored.  Frustrated too.  False dramatics bother me.  For instance, they’ve got a ton of independent light sources they’ve been using to stay alive, yet as the bar’s generator is running low on power, they all seem to be saying that if it dies, they die.  So for about 5 to 10 minutes of the movie they’re sitting there praying the generator keeps running and the lights stay on.  All the while, I’m thinking, “um…turn on a flashlight maybe?”

Of course, they remember the flashlights later, when it’s convenient to the plot, but by then I was already rooting for the shadow demon monster creatures to finish them off.  Or for Affleck to save the day…

Hoard batteries.

10 – 3 for booorrrrring characters – 1 for too many frustrating lapses in logic by the characters – .7 because it’s not particularly scary = 5.3

Rubber (2010)

Tags

Comedy, Horror, Jack Plotnick, Movie, Roxane Mesquida, Rubber, Stephen Spinella, Wings Hauser

...meets the road.

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Stephen Spinella, Jack Plotnick, Wings Hauser, Roxane Mesquida

Cop: But…this is real life, Chad…we have a dead body over there…
Lt. Chad: No…c’mon…it’s not real life.  Look at yourself.  You have a stuffed toy alligator under your arm.
Cop: …so?

A possessed tire wreaks havoc in a small town via its ability to telekinetically explode people’s heads.

Yeah, you read that right.

And that’s not even the half of it.

This movie opens with a man, standing on the side of a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, holding a large quantity of binoculars in his hands, watching a car driving towards him knocking over and destroying several poorly built chairs.  The car comes to a stop, the trunk opens, and out steps Lieutenant Chad (Spinella).  He proceeds to look straight into the camera and explain how in the movies, much like in real life, most things happen for “no reason”.  This seems to be nullifying any questions we might have about what we’re about to see.

We soon discover, though, that Lieutenant Chad is not exactly speaking to us, the audience, but to a group of people standing on the side of the road who will soon be given the binoculars I mentioned before.  This will allow them to watch the “show” that is about to begin unfolding in the desert.   This particular show involves a rubber car tire (apparently named Robert) coming to life, rolling around for a while, then discovering that he has the power to destroy.  At first it’s just small animals, but eventually his attention is drawn to humans.

I’m assuming that writer/director, Quentin Dupieux, is a David Lynch fan.  While this movie isn’t as surreal as what I’ve seen from Lynch, it certainly leaves you scratching your head while it blurs the line between what’s real and isn’t real and between audience and characters.

I have to applaud Dupieux for trying something different and original, but it didn’t always work for me.  While the tire had some actual personality early on as it tried to learn how to roll without falling over, eventually watching it travel around the desert became tedious.  It felt like he was padding a small idea into a much longer film.  Plus, while the exploding head special effects are quite impressive, that got old too.

Now, on the bright side, Stephen Spinella is just fun to watch.  He has most of the best lines and injects an energy into every scene he’s in.  Without him, it would be hard to recommend this movie at all.  He elevates it to check-it-out-on-Netflix range.  Actually, most of the performances are good.  Everybody plays their roles fairly straight in an otherwise confusing movie.  That nicely balances out the bizarreness of the plot (if that word applies here).

Maybe Dupieux was trying to make some sort of commentary on society or Hollywood…or movies…or movie audiences…or…I don’t know…there has to be some point to it all, right?  Whatever it was, I guess I missed it.

So in the end, it’s just a little too bizarre – and occasionally boring – to strongly recommend, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t entertained quite a few times throughout.  It just has the feeling of a 20 minute film padded out to feature length.  I wouldn’t be surprised if it did start out originally as a short film.  So, maybe if you watch this with your finger on the fast forward button and just zip past the scenes of the tire rolling around for minutes at a time, you’ll find this one to be even more entertaining.

Be nice to tires.

10 – 2.3 because there’s a lot of dull/repetitive padding scenes – 1.5 for being just a little too bizarre/confusing for my taste + .2 for Stephen Spinella’s performance = 6.4

Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2008)

Tags

Action, Alan Bagh, Birdemic, Comedy, Horror, Movie, Romance, Whitney Moore

Since it is hard to classify this as an actual movie (see the trailer), I’m not going to use my normal review format.  I’m just…going to type for a while.  That seemed to be the plan of the director of this “movie”, to just…film for a while…and hope that his actors eventually spoke lines resembling what, I assume, was written and that the special effects added later would fill in some of the other gaps.

Unfortunately, the not-so-special effects are major gaps themselves.

I love a guy with a small carbon footprint...

This is one of those times where you’re just not sure if the makers of the movie were trying to make a serious movie or if they were just having fun making something that they knew was terrible.  It’s hard to imagine anyone could make something this bad without it being on purpose.

That being said…I fear that this was an honest attempt at a movie.  I hope I’m wrong, but there is evidence to support my theory.

First of all, it’s not trying to be a comedy.  Most movies that know how cheesy and low budget they are tend to throw in a lot of attempted jokes.  Unless their plan was one long ironic joke, then there are no real attempts at humor here other than our hero’s sex-obsessed friend’s occasional inappropriate remark.  Also, the whole movie seems to be one long cautionary tale about being environmentally conscious and living in peace with others.  Yes, one character does utter the line, “why can’t we all just give peace a chance, ya know?”  Plus, the website imaginepeace.com is prominently displayed in several scenes.  It’s no wonder they were able to use an instrumental version of the song Imagine in the movie.  Yoko Ono seems to be the creator of, or at least heavily involved in, Imagine Peace.

My guess is that Imagine Peace wanted to make a little horror movie to act as a conveyance for their heavy handed environmental message, so they hired a novice director and some inexperienced “actors” (aka automatons that will robotically read whatever lines are fed them) and threw this junk together one week.

Make no mistake, though, it is hilarious junk.  Whether it was meant to be or not, it’s as fun to watch as The Room or Troll 2.  In fact, Troll 2 looks competently directed and edited compared to this movie.  Sound levels change wildly when switching from one angle in a scene to another, some scenes have no sound at all, and often actors deliver lines and then just look around like, “is the scene over?”

coathangers are useless against imaginary eagles...

And then there’s the birds.  The eagles are fighting back against all of our pollution and our starting of forest fires and our corvettes and candy-eating, and etc etc.  Their main tactic in doing so is dispatching hundreds of really horrible computer animated versions of themselves to swoop in and slice people’s throats.  Or, alternatively they will dive bomb buildings around the city (with airplane sound effects included) and cause huge explosions that can be seen a mile away.  Of course, other times their dive-bombing results in merely a cracked window on a car, so I guess it just depends on how much speed they can achieve before impact…or how much fuel they have in their tank?  Who knows.

I do know that the birds only show up about 35-40 minutes into the movie.  The first portion is spent establishing the complete lack of personality featured in all of our stars.  There’s Rod, a hot shot salesman at a…company of some sort, and then there’s Natalie, a model who has just landed a big gig with Victoria’s Secret.  I will say this for the movie – Natalie is definitely believable as a lingerie model.  She is quite the attractive one.  And she’s possibly the best actor in the movie as well, though it’s hard to tell when everybody is reading such horrible lines.  This interview with the actress, Whitney Moore, actually sheds some light on how this movie came to exist.  It’s funny, go read it.

pew pew pew!

I could go on and on about this movie.  It seems like it would be fun to just break it down scene by scene.  For instance, I just loved the scene where our heroes are fending of a bird attack on the side of the highway with various firearms, including an automatic assault rifle, while a bunch of other cars are just streaming by in the background, business as usual.  I wonder how many near accidents were caused by people slowing down to see why people were running around with machine guns on the side of the road, firing up in the air at imaginary birds.  Though, I guess people might be used to that in California.

To sum up, if you like horribly, comically bad movies, you will not be disappointed by Birdemic.  You will roll your eyes at all of the preachy environmental talk, but it’s worth it just to see those eagles do their thing.  And be sure to watch all the way til the poignant final scene where the eagles mysteriously fly back from whence they came…the ocean.  The ocean?  I guess eagles live out on Eagle Island in the Pacific Ocean.  See?  Learn something new every day.

the end...?