50 Worst Movies with Reviews (45-41)

45. Soultaker (1990)
Soultaker makes little to no sense at all. Its premise is that there's this Angel of Death who looks like Martin Sheen (and yeah, it's his far less famous brother) who goes around taking people's souls when they die. Then this group of teenagers gets in a car accident and he's out to get them. Eventually there's only two teens left (exes, of course, who end up falling back in love) and they figure out that they're in comas and almost dead and will be dead if Martin Sheen gets their souls.
While at first it seems like a decent premise it just makes less and less sense as it goes on. And it's painfully obvious from the time they get to Summerfest that the film's budget is about as big as my month's grocery bill. The acting sucks, the pacing sucks, there's very little logic involved. I did enjoy one part though, when the girl was being stalked by her mother who turned into Martin Sheen. She was naked at the time and in a towel and then she went off running and was just all of a sudden fully clothed in the next shot. One of the most obvious continuity errors I've ever spotted, right up there with the infamous backwards/not backwards hat in that Stolen Summer bullshit we had to watch in Sacraments class sophomore year.

44. Jurassic Park III (2001)
I have already ripped this film a new asshole, not only as a sequel but as a standalone movie that sucks. But the painful reality is that I can never hurt this film nearly as much as it has hurt me. This shouldn't have really been a bad movie. It shouldn't have been made at all, but the budget was there and it should have at least been exciting and scary and have good visual effects. I don't know for sure because I'm too lazy to look it up, but I'd bet this probably has the 2nd highest budget of any film in this list, behind only The Day After Tomorrow, which at least gave what the viewer expected. This fails even as a dinosaur action movie because its special effects suck compare to the previous two films, despite a good deal more money being put into them.
I've already reviewed this film at length on this blog and I highly recommend you take a look at that because it articulates every detail as to why this movie sucks the big one. So I'm going to focus on one specific point. I apparently received a response--or dare I say retort--to a point I made in my review about the part where the velociraptors leave their Bond-villain trap to kill Tea Leoni and Billy and the guy from Fargo. Someone said that Michael Jeter's arm moved because he was never actually dead, the raptors left him alive to lure in the others. Now I'll admit this is feasible AT FIRST. But later on it shows a raptor take the dude's head in its mouth and snap his neck or something. please note that Jeter does not scream or wince or show any reaction to having his head inside a bloodthirsty maneating beast's head, though according to this response he had just voluntarily moved his arm not two minutes ago.
Fuck everyone involved with this movie. Whenever I want to gain faith back in the human race, this movie sinks into my subconscious and I know we're all hopeless again.

43. Terminator Salvation (2009)
Also known as Transformers, this is a movie that someone somehow gave the green-light to even without Arnold or James Cameron. The whole John Connor legacy and the Resistance and everything was a significant part of my childhood as was Jurassic Park, and painfully this film ruined just about all of that.
First of all, this isn't really a Terminator movie. It's like a post-apocalyptic war movie but it doesn't have the plot that a terminator is out hunting to kill someone to prevent future events that made up the first two and I guess even the third movie. But even beyond that, this movie sucks. There's Christian Bale playing John Connor, though he must have been under the impression he was playing Batman judging by his 80-year-old Clint Eastwood speaking voice. I am never going to speak words of support for Christian Bale and say he is a better actor than this because, guys, I saw him in Public Enemies. Enough said.
This movie is very forgettable, as are many dumb action movies. But it's never--I repeat: NEVER a good thing when the best part of your movie is seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger's face redone in a CGI. That was kind of a pleasant surprise for me in the theater but I don't know, this movie has nothing else going for it.
Also the guy who plays Kyle Reese is awful. I don't know the actor's name but he also played a very exaggerated Ensign Chekov in the new Star Trek. Far worse here actually.
Another bad thing about this movie is that it thinks the audience is made up of idiots. It sets up this character played by Sam Worthington, the guy from Avatar, who becomes really helpful to have around Christian Bale. But oops!!!!!!!!! It's revealed 2/3 in that he's a machine. Actually no, it was revealed to the audience in the opening fucking scene! Like how stupid do they think we are? They set it up like it's this big mystery even though they did everything in the opening scene but flat-out say he's a machine!
This movie goes for that dark, gritty tone, and just has a very depressing feel to it all-around. The sets are decent at times but the camera-work is nauseating (like another Christian Bale action film that I can think of) and there's never any suspense or anything for the audience to care about. I don't care about the friggin war. I know the humans win. The whole point of the 3 movies was to get John Connor to the war, and the humans would win. But that's the problem with a time-travel series, I guess...
Skip it. You'll thank me later.

42. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
Can I have another dumb sequel to a damn good action movie please? Yep, you probably knew this was coming. The first Pirates of the Caribbean movie was a damn good and refreshing action film. Okay, maybe it's not Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it did a great job of setting up characters that were interesting and that you cared about, thrusting them into fantastical situations, had an excellent performance from Johnny Depp, and did a great job with the sets and the realism of sea travel and battles while mixing it with pirate lore and legend. It's one of my favorite movies still and if there's any complaint I could come up with, it'd be that it's a little long, though admittedly never really dry.
The only thing this movie has in common with its predecessor is that it's too long. Except this time you feel every minute of it. Hell, ever second of it. Every second I spent in the theater watching this was spent thinking about wiser seconds that I could have spent.
This movie tries to outdo its predecessor way too far. For example, let's take the final sword fight scene. The first one offered a great fight between Depp and Geoffrey Rush that was both exciting and visually unique, switching Rush from skeleton to human as he stepped in and out of the light. This one has to get even more fancy because it can't do the same exact thing. So we have three people fighting for a treasure chest. Who's fighting who? Doesn't this guy like this guy? No? I guess not. And a good deal of it is done on a fucking giant wheel as it goes around. Now I know fencing is all about balance but toss anyone on that thing and they'd get their ass run over in a matter of seconds. Nothing feels reel about this movie and I realize the first film wasn't exactly a documentary, but it at least felt real. I mean yeah, it has Keira Knightley getting tossed up 80 feet into the air by pirates holding a trampoline but I don't like mentioning that scene because it reminds me a bit of a typical Disney music number. I guess that makes two complaints with the original movie.
My biggest complaint about this movie other than its boringness and utter stupidity comes in the fact that it is absolutely a TERRIBLE sequel. Why do I say that? Not only does it fail to capture the feel of the original film, but it goes so far as to contradict everything mentioned in the first film. Bootstrap Bill was dead. Nope, he's a member of Davy Jones's crew. Barbossa was dead, you say. Nonsense, he's alive at the end of this movie! But the thing that most bothers me about this movie draws back to the conclusion of the first film. When Sparrow escapes his hanging and gets back to the Black Pearl, Commadore Norrington is left with the opportunity to pursue him. Smiling slightly, he says: "I think we can afford to give Jack Sparrow one day's head start." I thought this was a great way to end this movie. Now it is open to two different perspectives. There's the idiot perspective: Commadore Norrington is extremely stubborn and he has not learned anything in this entire movie. He fully plans on chasing after Sparrow the next day. And there's the correct perspective: He considers chasing Sparrow a mere formality because he has learned in the duration of the film that 1. he isn't that bad of a guy and is actually arguably good and 2. IT'S NOT WORTH IT.
But this film has Norrington in it, of course, and we find through exposition that he lost his ship and was kicked out of the Royal Navy or whatever after desperately pursuing Sparrow in a hurricane. WHAT?! Why? You could see at the end of the movie that he didn't give a shit. Would he really risk the best ship in the Royal Navy to go after one person he wanted to hang? But now apparently he's an alcoholic civilian. Well I guess that explains why he said yes about being in the movie, but come on!
So this movie focuses primarily on the Kraken I guess. Or no, it focuses primarily on Davy Jones and some weird legend with him. Or no, it focuses on saving Bootstrap Bill.....I don't know. All I know is that still nobody trusts Jack Sparrow but the audience and he sacrifices himself to the Kraken at the end of the movie. Did anyone think Sparrow was actually dead? Well if anyone did, Barbossa was resurrected at the end of the movie to say that he's still alive somewhere. Thank God for that.

41. AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004)
Here we go: the shitfest that ruined two prominent franchises. Don't see these kinds of movies for the plots obviously, they're just excuses to get people to witness aliens fighting predators who are also aliens? Now I've done some research here and I'm not actually certain if there was a single human cast member or not, I've found conflicting viewpoints. The film lists a cast and says that Sanaa Lathan played the lead and was top-billed but from everything else I've looked at, the cast was just a bunch of uninteresting cardboard cutouts.
One problem with this film is that it's PG-13 even though the Alien series and Predator series had previously been nothing but R-rated. Clearly it's just looking for a bigger audience but is thus less enjoyable due to not being as violent as it could have been. Really I don't care because it just sucked that much.
Nothing was suspenseful in this movie. It focused a lot on the human characters even though they all just sucked so much. I knew right away that this was the type of movie that would see one character survive. Do I know that because I've seen Alien? No, I know that because this movie was made in such a sloppy and unsuspenseful way that it's really quite embarrassing.
I'd love to say director Paul W.S. Anderson is above this type of film, but looking at his filmography (Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil, Death Race, The Three Musketeers...) I can't really say that.

50 Worst Movies with Reviews (50-46)

This has been something I've been wanting to do for a while. Here goes nothing.

50. The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
A Roland Emmerich film, it should come as no surprise that this movie sucks. My biggest complaint here is that it is absolutely ridiculous. Global warming causes an ice age. No, really, that's the plot! Even if I could accept that, it gets pretty ridiculous when Jake Gyllenhaal starts outrunning cold weather that would kill him if it caught up to him. Yeah... There were some talented people involved in this, notably Gyllenhaal and excellent British actor Ian Holm, in a regrettably brief role. And the film stars Dennis Quaid. Expect to see him further up on the list by the way. At least this film is visually satisfying. Emmerich has a fetish for large-scale destruction and special effects and the scene with New York being completely flooded actually looks very good, I'll admit. But I feel like this movie had large-scale destruction merely for having action scenes. For instance, there's a scene in Los Angeles in which there are multiple huge tornadoes. These tornadoes have nothing to do with the movie and are never explained as to what they have to do with either global warming or an ice age. I'm confused.
I've of course heard that this isn't Roland Emmerich's film, but it was the one for me that kept me from watching his more recent movies. That having been said, Anonymous is getting really good reviews so far, so I'll have to see that.

49. Scary Movie 4 (2006)
The new-wave of spoof movies that started with Scary Movie is the worst thing to ever happen to film. While not the worst of these, Scary Movie 4 was certainly quite awful. Despite being made by talented people, this film is under the impression that re-enacting a scene from a recent movie will have the audience laughing. That's all this movie is is re-enacting scenes and throwing in gags and visual puns whenever it's convenient. I remember seeing this in the theater and I felt like it went on forever, because it just got so boring. If a joke didn't work, it just kept going, notably the Million Dollar Baby spoof, which really didn't need to be in the movie, and certainly not for as long as it was. And of course, there's that stupid, immature, gross-out, bathroom humor that defines the Scary Movie franchise.

48. The Terror (1963)
Jack Nicholson, Boris Karloff, and Francis Ford Coppola. How can you go wrong? This is a good example.
The Terror was made without a script and in a matter of weeks or maybe even days and it shows. Roger Corman is the master of B-movies and he made this after finishing filming on another film early, so he decided to make use of the sets that he had left over so as to not let them go to waste. And that's all that's interesting in this movie: the sets. Everything else sucks.
I still can't really tell you what the plot is. There's something to do with like a dead wife and there's a French soldier (Nicholson) wandering around for whatever reason. I don't really know. Boris Karloff has no presence in this film, and Jack Nicholson wasn't THE Jack Nicholson yet. What I love most of all though is how this was made. Corman would shoot scenes of Karloff walking around the set, and then he would work them into the "story" after filming them.
There really is no plot or anything that makes sense in this movie. It's just creepy atmosphere with mildly creepy dialogue that comes off as hilarious on occasions, with how bad it is said. One thing to look for though is a dude getting his eyes ripped out by a bird, which is like the only moment of action in the film and it's pretty cool.
Oh and apparently Francis Ford Coppola directed some of this movie, though it's credited only to Corman.

47. The Mummy Returns (2001)
I'd like to start this off by saying I'm a fan of the 1999 Mummy film. It's a good action movie. It has that old-time adventure feel to it, some great action, and it's a pretty good new-age way to tell the classic 1932 Mummy story. The sequel, however, is just plain stupid. Everything about it is contrived.
The story takes a stupid turn as for the most part, it ignores the Mummy and focuses on the Scorpion King, who apparently we're supposed to care about even though we don't.
The film starts almost right away with a dumb action sequence in London where they're driving around and shooting at these mummy things which act like monkeys for whatever reason. It sets the tone for a dumb movie. Not saying that the predecessor was intelligent, but I at least liked how that focused on the mythology of the mummy and the backstory and everything.
And directer Stephen Sommers goes overboard on the slow-motion in action scenes here, a trait which he carried to 2004's Van Helsing and 2009's GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra. It's very difficult to feel excitement from an action scene when it's done in painfully slow-motion.
This movie also has very little original to offer. The most memorable scene of the preceding movie was of course the sandstorm scene, so they had to re-do that. Except now it's not sand, but water. And they're not in a plane, but like a hot-air balloon or something. And again at the conclusion of the film, everything around them in this ancient city is destroyed. Except this time not in a way that makes sense or looks real, but in like this weird typhoon/earthquake thing ala Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. That having been said, the dumbest moment of the movie actually comes during the one original part--when an army of Pygmies attacks them for some reason.

46. The Trail of the Pink Panther (1982)
This is the most unfortunate movie in this list. I say that because the Blake Edwards/Peter Sellers Pink Panther movies are truly hilarious. So what went wrong here? Well........Peter Sellers died before production started.
So this movie really shouldn't have been made. I don't understand what Blake Edwards was thinking to go through with this film after Sellers died. Well anyways it was made and the result is basically a clip show. Now clip shows from sitcoms can be pretty funny because they do show the funniest things to happen throughout the show, but the absence of original material is truly annoying. That's what I felt here.
But another thing that's annoying about this movie is that they don't treat it like just a clip show. They say Clouseau has been killed and they go around interviewing people from the previous movies who knew him and see what their experiences were like. As great as it is to see Herbert Lom as well as some minor characters being interviewed, providing segues into flashbacks, you just really wish there was better use for them.

Frustration

Monster a Go-Go is not the worst movie I've ever seen. I mean yes, it's just awful. It was made in the '60s and looks like it was made in the '30s, true, and the acting is laughable, yes, but it is still better than a lot of awful movies I've seen. In my upcoming list of worst movies ever made, you will notice that I give preference to modern movies with significant budgets when picking the worst films of all time.

But Monster a Go-Go does have (in addition to arguably the dumbest title ever) the absolute stupidest conclusion/climax EVER and I'm going to carefully articulate just how stupid and offensive it is.

The plot is that there is this guy who goes out to space or whatever and comes back but he's nowhere near the ship thing that crashed or whatever. But what there is is a giant radioactive monster that kills people that these couple scientists believe to be the astronaut. They treat him for a while and then he escapes and he's on the run. The military is after him and the film makes it clear that he's in a tunnel underground. Then the film also makes it painfully clear that the two people following him are in the same tunnel.

And then, in the DUMBEST moment ever on film, the narrator explains that the monster just isn't there, that it's just disappeared or whatever. And then they get a telegram saying the astronaut was found 8000 miles away. WHAT?!

So let's analyze this. This means that the guy is alive. This also means that he wound up 8000 miles away from his ship. How? That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. But then what the hell was the monster thing? Is the ending supposed to try and make us feel like there's a monster on the loose? Because that's not working. No fear can ever be felt while watching such an awful movie. I really don't get it. Can someone who's seen this movie--either of you--explain this to me please?

I Complain a Lot

I am aware that I complain a lot about random stuff, but really, the Best Buy on Fordham Road in the Bronx, New York is absolutely ridiculous.

Why is it ridiculous, you ask? Well first of all there's the computer service or whatever. My computer got a virus at one time and deleted all my programs. I took it in and they asked me like 500 questions and they said they'd have it fixed in 4-7 days and they'd call me. 9 days later without a call I went in and asked about it. They said it had been done for a while. But we turned it on and it didn't work. It turns out that the lady that asked me a bunch of questions ended up writing down the wrong information and the work that they did on my computer only lasted about 5 minutes. So they had to fix it again...

But what bothers me about that Best Buy most of all is its disorganization.  Now I am aware that it's in the Bronx and a bad neighborhood, but that's no excuse to have Lil Wayne cds in the ROCK/POP section right next to The Beatles. The organization of CDs follows no genre restrictions, logic, or any rules of conduct that any 7-year-old could do themselves. CDs are overturned, mixed into the wrong section, or by the DVDs. It's just a mess and it hurts my eyes and brain to look at, to be perfectly honest.

Birdemic: Shock and Terror - the worst movie ever

“What did you do last Friday night?”

            “Went to a party. It was awesome. You?”

            What did I do last Friday night? How could I possibly put it to words? I did indeed participate in the most meaningless hour and thirty-three minutes of my life. Doing so, I most likely took a few years off of my own life. I laughed. I cried. I tore my hair out. I screamed but not out of fear.

            There are very few movies that I can honestly say have changed my life. These are films that could either change the way we view life or perhaps even just the way we view cinema, if it’s ground-breaking enough. Movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Citizen Kane, and Pulp Fiction come to mind, but then there’s this little 2008 cult film, largely unknown to the populace. I am talking of course of the film that is Birdemic: Shock and Terror.

            The first thing you notice is the title. Birdemic. Has there ever been a sillier word written in the history of mankind? And as for the subtitle…well…it’s simply both shocking and terrifying that this film was made.

            The plot is like Hitchcock’s The Birds. But the movie sucks. It’s horrible beyond words. The acting is cringe-inducing as well as the dialogue, the directing is troubled to say the least, and the sound and editing appear to have been handled by a kindergartner. And the special effects are beyond awful. Now special effects don’t make a movie and I don’t often complain about special effects. I can accept dated special effects and enjoy movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Birds. But both those movies look like Avatar when compared to Birdemic. When your entire movie revolves around birds attacking people and they appear to have come from Microsoft ClipArt, it’s never a good sign.

            Seriously the visual effects are just hilarious, but they might not even be the worst thing about this movie. Everything is just unnatural—the acting, the dialogue, the film’s soundtrack which appears to have just been taken from your generic computer program.

            So it’s a movie about birds attacking, right? Yes. Yes it is.

            But it’s not. Nothing like that happens until almost an hour into the movie. Instead we have to watch the main character drive around for like ten minutes, with some of the most awkward cinematography ever. While he’s driving his Mustang, the camera is looking out the windshield while the credits role. But the camera is at the weirdest angle and overall it’s just very unpleasant to the eyes. And then the main character eventually gets out of his car and has the most unnatural walk that I can’t even describe. It’s like he’s walking less than a mile an hour. And then he enters the restaurant and this is the first indication that the film has a major problem in its audio (other than the painfully annoying credit music). The film jumps from incredibly loud background noise—to a point in which the waitress’s words are hardly identifiable—to dead silence and then back to incredibly loud. And this happens frequently throughout the movie—like more times than I can count.

            So the main character stares at this one attractive woman while she eats and then she leaves and he follows without paying for whatever the hell it is that he bought. He catches up with her and he finds out that he went to high school with her. And then he asks her where she’s from. And he says where he’s from and it isn’t where she’s from so how did they go to high school together? Anyways apparently she’s a fashion model, he’s like a salesman or something for something and they exchange business cards. So he’s Rod and she’s Nathalie or whatever.

            This movie has obnoxious environmental overtones. It’s clear that writer/director/producer James Nguyen does not know the meaning of the word “subtle”. People complain about global warming throughout the entire movie, there’s a bunch of random stuff about solar panels and things like that, the camera zooms in on the prices of a gas station in one shot, so it’s no surprise that eventually it’s revealed that the reason the birds are attacking is because of global warming and stuff. But there’s plenty to talk about for before we even get to the birdemic scenes.

            So eventually this “relationship” progresses between the two characters. They go on a date, they meet her mother, and then they recap all of what’s happened like multiple times or whatever. And none of the dialogue sounds remotely realistic. They don’t sound like real people talking and every line of dialogue is awkward, usually explains more than is necessary, and the people who are friends don’t seem to know each other at all based on their dialogue.

            Then we’re introduced to two random characters having sex in a bedroom with clothes on and an “Imaginepeace.com” poster up for no reason. The woman is Nathalie’s best friend and the guy is Rod’s best friend, apparently. So they eventually have a double date. But the strangest part about this scene—along with the distracting poster—is that there’s an instrumental 32-bit cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine” playing. Why? And this apparently like becomes a motif or whatever for whenever we see this woman. When they go on a double date, she’s wearing an Imagine Peace t-shirt and later on when they run into them during the birdemic, that stupid song is playing again.

            So on their double-date they go and see The Inconvenient Truth and then they spell it out for the audience that this is a movie about the environment because the characters say they are going to get green cars and stuff. Then Nathalie and Rod continue to go on dates or whatever. When’s the birdemic going to come? Even as like a b-monster movie this is incredibly weak because nothing happens for like forever. They walk on the beach and it’s so windy that you can hardly hear what they’re saying. Then they see a dead bird and act like it’s an incredibly huge deal. Why? It’s a dead bird; it’s something to point out but not like dwell on. But they go by it and it’s clearly fake; it looks like ClipArt. And so that happens. It doesn’t really pertain to the future plot because although there is indeed a bird, the birdemic isn’t that birds die. They attack people.

            So then Rod and Nathalie go to like this bar where they’re the only people there and there’s this one dude who sings an R&B song that’s surprisingly catchy and they dance emphatically to it. But they’re the only ones there…so it’s strange. Then they go have sex in a hotel room for some reason except they’re clothed. It’s just strange.

            Then the birds finally attack. Except it’s like the next day or whatever and you never see the start of the attack, you just see a bunch of ClipArt birds who have seemingly been attacking the city for hours already. How do I know this? Because there’s already fires all over the city (again, ClipArt fires). And the birds make plane noises for whatever reason and just crash into stuff, causing explosions. It’s unclear if the birds themselves are exploding or they’re crashing into stuff that explodes. And if you care at this point then there’s something wrong with you.

            So Nathalie and Rod wake up and see that the birds are trying to come inside, so they escape to another hotel room where they run into an ex-Marine and his girlfriend. Then they run to the Marine’s car, defending themselves with wire hangers. When they’re in the car the dude apparently has a bunch of guns or whatever, including a machine gun. Why? Wouldn’t that be a major felony for him to have those in his car if he were to be pulled over for any reason? And besides, he was just in a hotel with his girlfriend, most likely on vacation. Why would he bring guns while he’s just with his girlfriend? And the guns, by the way, look like guns you might use in a game of laser tag.

            So they drive away and pick up two bratty kids who have no enthusiasm whatsoever for the dialogue they have to deliver. So they’re driving around, stealing food and water from a deli, and then driving around more, and then they have a picnic by the beach for no reason. They run into this scientist dude who—in my favorite scene in the film—flawlessly switches the subject from birds attacking to global warming causing viruses that affect all the birds and kill them. So at this point you’re aware that global warming is causing the birds to attack, according to the movie.

            Then the Marine’s girlfriend is killed while going to the bathroom in the field. Why did she think that was a good idea? So they drive around more and shoot more birds and come across a double-decker bus with three people in it pressed up against the windows, with some of the worst acting I’ve ever seen. I don’t care if they’re extras, that’s just inexcusable. The Marine runs in and brings them out, insisting that they’ll be safe after they have shot the birds with their toy guns. So they come out and more birds come. They shoot a bird and it like explodes or something and a bunch of yellow acid(?) drops all over them ala Alien. They scream and wail in pain (or it could have been over why they were in that movie but if that’s the case, good heads-up by the cameraman to catch that) and then they’re attacked by birds. Their faces are bloody and stuff even though if you look at where the birds are placed they are actually nowhere near their faces. So anyways all four of them die and now it’s just Rod, Nathalie, and those two stupid kids.

            They drive around again. They need to get gas so they go to this one gas station and the door is opened and the place is evidently unaffected by the birds but the attendant mentions the birds. I don’t get it. And he charges them $100 a gallon. And for reasons that I don’t know if I’ll be able to fully explain, this is just the strangest scene I’ve ever witnessed in a movie. There’s this weird, blurred-out feel to the entire thing. It’s like they’re not even in a gas station and they just projected a gas station in post-production. But there’s no way this movie had the money for that. I think it’s just that every product name is blurred out so they don’t get sued, but there are so many products that it’s disorienting actually. The kids grab some candy bars. The boy seems to enjoy his SDHFPKHWP bar and the girl enjoys her FOIWEIEU bar as well.

            They drive again and pull over to help this one cowboy who needs gas. They said they can’t help him but they offer him a ride. And then he pulls out a gun and says they need to sell him gas. Why sell? If you have a gun you might as well just take the damn gas. So they give him the gas and he backs away, going in the opposite direction of his car, and then a bird swoops by and slits his throat, killing him. Rod then gets in the car and drives away. Now it’s basically a cliché in horror movies to do stupid things. People drop things and leave them, don’t close doors—things like that. But usually there’s at least some kind of an excuse, like they’re on the run and in a hurry or whatever. Here they have all the time in the world. The bird that killed the cowboy flew away and there are no other birds present. There is virtually NO excuse for him not to take the extra gas or gun.

So they drive again. They come to a lighthouse. Nathalie says that’s where her friend is. Why? Does she work at a lighthouse? Does she live in a lighthouse? Why else would she be at a lighthouse? I think she like recognized the car or whatever but she clearly points at the lighthouse instead of the car on the side of the road. So they go to the car which has open windows and the friends are dead, 32-bit “Imagine” playing again.

At some point they go in the woods for some reason and come across this really creepy looking guy who is hilarious in his lack of subtlety. He lives in a tree and says he’s safe from the birds because they only attack people in cars and gas stations. How does he know that if he just lives in a tree in the middle of the woods? It’s established that his treehouse isn’t even high up in the tree so it’s not like he has a good view of anything that isn’t ten feet away from him. And he lectures about how the birds don’t scare him at all but forest fires do. So the group of people go back to their car and kind of encounter a forest fire except not really.

 Then they go to catch some fish to eat at a beach. And this is another one of my favorite moments in the film. Rod opens the trunk to see what he can get to get food. “Oh, look, a fishing pole,” he says. “I can catch some fish with it. Oh, look, a stove. I can cook it.” The horrible writing combined with the lackadaisical tone of the actor playing Rod just make this such a joy to watch. It’s the little things in life.

            So they cook seaweed and a fish—not skinned by the way. Then the kids don’t want to eat. Then more birds come. Then they run back to the car and run out of ammo. A bird goes kamikaze and cracks the windshield a little bit, dying. Are these birds organized? Did that bird think it could survive that collision, or did it have like a needs-of-the-many-outweigh-the-needs-of-the-few attitude? I don’t get it.

            Then the birds leave because other smaller birds come. Doves? I’m not sure. So apparently all is well even though the birds have left plenty of times during the movie, but I guess the eighth time is the charm or whatever. So they all go to the beach and look the sea. And you honestly can’t hear the last line of the movie because the sound is so messed up. And then it ends.

            So what are the themes of Birdemic? Clearly it’s a cautionary tale about human beings’ harmful carbon emissions or whatever. But I think it goes much deeper than that. It’s an allegory, really, of how pre-marital sex contributes to the downfall of contemporary society. The movie has nothing to do with birds until after the two main characters have sex and their friends who constantly talk about sex are killed. It’s like a slasher movie in this sense, I guess. I don’t really know.

            This is an extremely entertaining movie in the sense that you never will not be laughing. You may pull out some hair and you will definitely lose brain cells, but you will have plenty of laughs. And it’s on Netflix: Watch Now or Instantly or whatever, so check it out.