The Birdemic Trilogy (2011-2022)—How NOT to Make an Indie Film
With so many resources out there, it’s no surprise that movies are much easier to make today than they were, say fifty years ago. All you really need is a script, camera and actors. With so many good examples of successful indie films that I’ve reviewed, I’ve decided to find a movie that’s the exact opposite of a good indie film. And no, I’m not talking about Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. That would be too easy. Oh no, I’m talking about something that makes The Room as amazing as Casa Blanca.
Rod (played by Alan Bagh), a salesman at a small company, meets a beautiful aspiring model named Nathalie (played by Whitney Moore) at a restaurant. After the company goes public, Rod becomes a millionaire while Nathalie becomes accepted by Victoria’s Secret. The two grow closer, with Nathalie even introducing Rod to her mom. After a date at the farmer’s market where they spend the night at a motel, the two wake up to ear-piercing screeching as eagles begin dive-bombing into buildings and people. They run for cover as they struggle to navigate this horrifying discovery.
So, writer and director James Nguyen was inspired to make this movie after watching The Birds by the one and only Alfred Hitchcock. Love him or hate him, you can’t deny Hitchcock’s talent in the art of filmmaking. That can’t be said about Nguyen. I think a better question is not “what went wrong with Birdemic?” Rather, we should be asking “what went right?” And to answer that…well…the movie made me laugh at how bad it is. But that was unintentional, as Nguyen envisioned it as a serious horror flick. I guess I liked Whitney Moore. I thought she was the best actor in the movie, but that’s not saying much considering you could cast a mannequin as Rod and the movie would still work.
As for the bad? Well, to say there’s a lot to unpack is being too generous. You might as well toss the whole suitcase into a dumpster and set it on fire. But I think I’ll start with the very first issue I witnessed in the first spoken scene: the sound design. It’s completely nonexistent. Dialogue will sound clipped or muddy as if it were recorded through a phone with shitty reception. And this isn’t prevalent in only a couple of scenes either. It’s a recurring problem throughout the entire runtime! You either can’t hear the actors, or they’ll sound like they recorded their lines in two different places!
But if you thought that was bad, oh boy, we haven’t even started. The acting is some of the worst I’ve seen. And I’ve seen a lot of bad movies. If you thought Kevin Costner couldn’t emote, then allow me to introduce you to Alan Bagh. He’s so wooden and stiff that he appears more akin to a Terminator than a person. Nothing, and I really mean nothing can squeeze a sliver of emotion out of him. He sees rabid Eagles swarming and dive-bombing the streets? Nothing. He sees Nathalie strip down to her underwear for him? Doesn’t even seem to care. Hell, he even looks more machine than man every time he walks. You could play the theme from The Terminator over his scenes and it surprisingly works!
And to top it all off on this ice cream sundae of a bad movie, the writing is easily the worst I’ve come across. The characters have literally no chemistry with one another. You could put two horses in a barn and they’d have more chemistry in five minutes than the whole cast in the entire film. Rod and Nathalie’s “romantic” scenes are staler than the five month old bread in my kitchen pantry while I can’t even remember the side characters’ names. The writing itself feels like a child with no idea how to formulate or articulate thoughts attempting to sound professional. Most importantly, the actors don’t feel like they’re acting out the lines. They’re just reading them verbatim.
Despite doing literally everything wrong, James Nguyen decided to make a sequel titled Birdemic 2: Electric Boogaloo—I mean—Birdemic 2: The Resurrection! It’s clear that he saw the first film’s online/cult success. But instead of making a better movie, he decided to make a self-aware shot-for-shot remake of the first film. The only difference is that we’re following not one, but TWO couples: Bill and Gloria, who tag along with Rod and Nathalie. Bill is a famous filmmaker while Gloria is a struggling actress who enters a relationship with Bill once he casts her as the female lead in his latest film. Hijinks ensue, the eagles attack L.A. but this time, they’re aided by evil cavemen and zombies! Oooo!
I’m not lying when I say that the second film almost reads like an ad-libbed skit from Rick and Morty. Why are there evil cavemen and zombies? Was James Nguyen inspired by the Resident Evil movies? Because if not, it just sounds like he was just making up the plot as he went along. It certainly doesn’t help that he wastes so much time focusing on nondescript details or holding on shots. For example, the opening scene of Bill walking to a restaurant lasts FIVE MINUTES!!! Five minutes of a scene that should’ve lasted five seconds at most. In a movie, every minute counts. Why waste valuable time dawdling on something insignificant when you could put that time to developing your characters?
If you thought Rod and Nathalie had no chemistry, Bill and Gloria will easily give them a run for their money as the new generic movie couple. Like Rod, Bill creepily follows Gloria around and finds half-assed excuses to talk and be around her. When he finally gets a chance to date her, he acts even creepier towards her complete with skin-crawling stares and cringe-worthy pickup lines. Where’s the part where he tells her he doesn’t like sand? And you know what’s funnier? Gloria actually falls for him! Despite being much more expressive than Rod, Bill goes almost too over the top, going from either a hyper puppy to a creepy corporate Tyler Durden. And yet I still can’t distinguish Bill from Rod other their different hairstyles and faces.
I’ll admit I went into the sequel with an open mind. Maybe James Nguyen learned from his mistakes. Or maybe we’ll see more of those same mistakes on a larger scale. Oh, how I love being right. What Nguyen failed to understand is that by being “in on the joke”, he eliminated what made it funny in the first place: the sincerity. The first film was awful, but it felt genuine. By being in on the joke, it feels like they’re cashing in on the original. We don’t know whether the film’s issues are legitimate or intentionally hilarious. If those involved in the production wanted to cash in on the original, there are better ways to do that. They could’ve made a documentary, like how Best Worst Movie explored Troll 2’s following and humanized the actors. Or perhaps written a book like Greg Sestero with “The Disaster Artist” documenting his experience on The Room. Hell if you have to make a follow up, Samurai Cop 2 did a significantly better job because the filmmakers prioritized making a good movie first over self-aware humor.
And this all leads to the third (and hopefully final) Birdemic movie in this disaster piece of a trilogy: Birdemic 3: Sea Eagle. James Nguyen decided to do something special with this movie: it’s a soft reboot of the first film. Complete with a total re-tread of the first film’s plot just with different characters. Oh, but that’s not all. To his credit, the third film actually looks relatively professional. Perhaps Nguyen went to film school. And you’d think he’d also have taken a screenwriting class too, right? Right?! Well, if mentioning either “climate change” or “global warming” in every other scene (sometimes every other line) is considered good writing, then yes, he’s an amazing writer!
Besides that, Nguyen makes the exact same technical errors as the first two films. Except now he seems to have no grasp on lighting. The movie will darken at random, despite being shot in broad daylight. And surprisingly, the CGI for the birds looks even WORSE than the first two films! The birds went from looking half-rendered to looking like PlayStation 1 alpha models that were in the process of being rendered before our eyes. How is this possible?!!! How did he mess up this badly?!! The bar is literally at the ground level and yet he still tripped over it! I thinks it’s generous to say that James Nguyen is probably the worst filmmaker of all time. Worse than Ed Wood, worse than Tommy Wiseau and even worse than Neil Breen. At least Breen’s movies are consistently bad.
Finally, I’d like to mention just how unrealistic and un-relatable all the main characters are. They all undergo an extremely rushed “from rags to riches” arc at about the first act’s midway point. From Rod becoming a millionaire, to Nathalie becoming a world-famous model, to Bill being a highly successful filmmaker. These characters are not characters. They’re wish-fulfillment power fantasies. Especially Bill, who I can safely say is Nguyen’s wish fulfillment self-insert. And even for wish-fulfillment, these guys are so poorly-written that they could actually learn things from isekai anime protagonists. Even most fanfiction self-inserts suffer more than any of the trilogy’s leads. If anything, the movies are more concerned about their lives and success to the point of sidelining the overarching message of global warming.
The Birdemic films do so much wrong that each film could have an essay written about their individual failings. I won’t lie, the first film was fun. But then they made a sequel and it quickly overstayed its welcome. And the third film killed any remnant of the joke, leaving behind a generic, poorly-made sermon on environmentalism. It’s safe to say that James Nguyen is unlike any other filmmaker. He’s so incompetent that I was genuinely surprised he didn’t shoot the film upside down or with the lens cap on. Hell, Birdemic 3 would’ve been way better if he did either of those two things. Even though movies are far easier to make today, not everyone can make a good movie. Let the Birdemic trilogy serve as a lesson on what NOT to do.
