GGreat horror movies and psychological thrillers come like magic spells, luring us into magical spaces where we want to run for the hills while also knowing that we won’t stop watching. Birdeater – A Nightmare Movie Australian movie The film is about a weekend party in the jungle that turns into a horrific mix of fighting, power plays, verbal bombast, and drug-fueled mayhem—a display of stylistic chutzpah, which I respect in some ways. But this production pushed me away more than it pulled me in, ultimately leaving me aggrieved, horrified, and wondering what the point of it was.
You’re not supposed to enjoy such a horrific experience, with its sly characters and toxic masculinity. But I’ve come across zoo animals that I find more dramatic than some of the people in Birdeater, who range from the feral to the complex and the disturbed. The latter describes Irene (Shabana Aziz), a bride-to-be who is invited by her fiancé Louis (Mackenzie Fearnley) to a groom’s party at a secluded estate with a group of his old friends: Dylan (Ben Hunter), who is particularly feral and eccentric, as well as Charlie (Jack Bannister), Murph (Alfie Gledell) and Sam (Harley Wilson). Charlie’s girlfriend Grace (Clementine Anderson) is also at the party.
For a long time, this was a waiting game, with the characters floundering and co-directors Jack Clark and Jim Weir trying to hide their cards, with no indication of where the story is headed. You can sense that it’s not going to be a walk in the park, but it’s impossible to know how dark the filmmakers are willing to go. Much of the anticipation in the first half of the film, as the characters gather and the weekend begins, is the knowledge that the story can’t continue to be vague and rambling: The film has to start doing something, it has to start being on something.
Cinema has provided plenty of bad wedding-themed speeches that we’ve watched through our fingers, from Steve Buscemi’s drunken rant about rehab and sex workers in The Wedding Singer to Charlotte Rampling’s horrific “enjoy it while it lasts” monologue in Melancholia . Birdeater makes a welcome contribution when Dylan, his cheeks glowing like hot coals, delivers a speech around the dinner table about 45 minutes in, bringing up ugly things from the past. In this threshold scene, emotions run high and conflict ignites; it’s as if the filmmakers are saying: We need some real conflict now.
From the start, the film’s visual rhythms were a bit off-balance. Some shots were framed awkwardly, off-centered, or had the actor’s back facing the camera. Others were deliberately distracting by violating Rule 180There are strange zooms and cuts. Sometimes the directors pause for unusually long close-ups; other times, they signal that something important is about to be said, but they don’t let us hear it. Ben Anderson’s editing has a sparse, circular momentum, cutting moments short and then returning to them unexpectedly. Watching this film is like putting on a new pair of leather shoes—you have to get used to them before you can appreciate them. For me, these shoes were strong and would not be softened.
I found some of the events in the final act a bit silly, and the entire film dragged on for too long, with strange false endings that felt inconclusive. The cast did a pretty good job of playing mostly unlikable characters, though none of them were particularly interesting or layered. However, Shabana Aziz and Mackenzie Fearnley are annoyingly effective as a couple who feel completely believable, even when the film spirals into madness. It’s clearly aiming for a spellbinding atmosphere, but the spell just didn’t work for me.
