In a cultural landscape that's post-irony, post-post-modern, and post-just-about-everything, one of the quirks is that cult movies are intentional. You have filmmakers setting out to shoot pop cultural collages that are purposefully cheesy, ridiculous, retro, over-the-top, and intended to be watched by an audience that laughs along rather investing any emotions. (Hence Snakes on a Plane, Bubba Ho-Tep, and Black Dynamite). All the more special then, in a time like this, when a cult movie is made accidentally, and borne on the sincerity of its own awfulness.
All of which is a prelude to talking about Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010), a "romantic thriller" from independent writer, director, producer, and former software James Nguyen. How to describe Birdemic? It is, to put it shortly, a remake of The Birds, only with an awful title, no budget, and a total lack of filmmaking skill on more or less every level. The writing is terrible, the editing a clunky lesson in Final Cut Pro, and the special effects so bad that the birds are literally stiff 2D animations that just hover in place. Most bad movies are simply boring for long stretches of their run time; Birdemic has fascinating, wildly perplexing creative decisions in nearly every scene. It is almost impossible when watching the film to accept that this was made with pure intentions—yet all indications, from the filmmaker's genuine admiration for Hitchcok and the film's bizarrely-delivered message on eco-friendliness, are that it was on some level meant to be taken straight. Over the past two years, it has become something of a midnight movie. You can find it on Netflix Instant, and perhaps you should, if only because seeing is believing.
Not that its status as a new "best worst movie" happened entirely on its own. Nguyen took the film to Sundance, shopped it around, and ended up drawing the attention of the horror website Bloody Disgusting, which sponsored its theatrical premiere. The event was hosted by Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, of the post-surrealist Tim and Eric Awesome Show, kicking off the film's tour of the country. The rest, as they say, is history.
And so, two years later, I visit IMDb, and the trailer of the day was for none other than Birdemic 2, written and directed by Nguyen himself, bringing back the two leads from the first first movie, and sold with the cult-friendly tagline "you asked for it." James Nguyen is, in an odd sense, "making it." Either by accident, intent, or some combination in between, he's stumbled on a niche and become a rare micro-budget filmmaker at Sundance whose work finds enough of an audience to demand a part two.
Yet there is a nagging sadness here, too. The way they're marketing it, ironically branding the director as a "visionary" and "the master of romantic thrillers (TM)" shows that they know exactly what this means and how the audience will take it. Everything perplexing about the original—the bad special effects, the characters' bizarre behavior, the roomtone that changed with each shot—is being self-consciously revived and trumpeted as the sequel's appeal. And self-consciousness is never unspoiled; it's the reason that, despite a killer trailer, an homage like Black Dynamite will never be as bizarrely entertaining as the genuine article (say, 1979's Disco Godfather). Call it a case for further study. At the moment, it looks like an off-kilter miniature version of a familiar American success story, the kind that's strangely inspiring, a little unsettling, and now post-ironic.
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