The first Birdemic was stupid, fun and hilarious. James Nguyen’s genuine attempt to combine bird-related horror with warnings about the dangers of global warming fell flat on its face due to its total ineptitude, and became a cult hit. Eventually, Ngyuen found a producer who gave him the money for a sequel.
Sadly, this sequel appears to be largely out of Nguyen’s hands. It’s been transformed into a parody of the original. Every single time someone dies, a character remarks that the person is dead, and the camera focuses on them, even more than once in many cases – a clear mockery of the original movie’s tendency to show close-ups of dead bodies. The original coat hanger scene is mocked directly: "Quick! Grab a coat hanger!" The message of the original is mocked, when a character confidently states that global warming is causing the birds to attack, because some random man in the woods told her so in the first movie.
This kind of self-mocking just strikes me as something that James Nguyen would never do, considering he appeared to be unaware of quite why people found such humor in his earnest attempts at filmmaking. It feels heavily like something the producer would have demanded in an attempt to give the audience what he assumed they wanted. Likewise with the blatant exploitation aspects and the zombies. A porno shoot crew being attacked by birds while filming a topless scene doesn’t seem to be in Nguyen’s original vision at all, and feels like it was forced in for the sake of humor and tastelessness. It’s as if the new producer was thinking, "This is one of those kinds of movies, so why not?" Well, I’ll tell you why not. Besides being tasteless, it’s also downright inappropriate and clashes with the tone of the original.
And then there are the zombies. Why do zombies show up later? Ignore any story-given reason, the real reason why is because the producer thought that Birdemic was simply braindead trash, so any additional braindead trash would only make it more fun. Instead, to me, the constant winking at the camera and jokes at the expense of the unintentionally goofy original killed the fun. James Nguyen's original film was So Bad Its Good, and straight from the heart. This movie loses the heart and soul, replacing it with intentional trash, which really rubs me the wrong way.
Winking at the camera kills the fun
The first Birdemic was stupid, fun and hilarious. James Nguyen’s genuine attempt to combine bird-related horror with warnings about the dangers of global warming fell flat on its face due to its total ineptitude, and became a cult hit. Eventually, Ngyuen found a producer who gave him the money for a sequel.
Sadly, this sequel appears to be largely out of Nguyen’s hands. It’s been transformed into a parody of the original. Every single time someone dies, a character remarks that the person is dead, and the camera focuses on them, even more than once in many cases – a clear mockery of the original movie’s tendency to show close-ups of dead bodies. The original coat hanger scene is mocked directly: "Quick! Grab a coat hanger!" The message of the original is mocked, when a character confidently states that global warming is causing the birds to attack, because some random man in the woods told her so in the first movie.
This kind of self-mocking just strikes me as something that James Nguyen would never do, considering he appeared to be unaware of quite why people found such humor in his earnest attempts at filmmaking. It feels heavily like something the producer would have demanded in an attempt to give the audience what he assumed they wanted. Likewise with the blatant exploitation aspects and the zombies. A porno shoot crew being attacked by birds while filming a topless scene doesn’t seem to be in Nguyen’s original vision at all, and feels like it was forced in for the sake of humor and tastelessness. It’s as if the new producer was thinking, "This is one of those kinds of movies, so why not?" Well, I’ll tell you why not. Besides being tasteless, it’s also downright inappropriate and clashes with the tone of the original.
And then there are the zombies. Why do zombies show up later? Ignore any story-given reason, the real reason why is because the producer thought that Birdemic was simply braindead trash, so any additional braindead trash would only make it more fun. Instead, to me, the constant winking at the camera and jokes at the expense of the unintentionally goofy original killed the fun. James Nguyen's original film was So Bad Its Good, and straight from the heart. This movie loses the heart and soul, replacing it with intentional trash, which really rubs me the wrong way.