Rod (Alan Bagh) is a software salesman; Nathalie (Whitney Moore) is an aspiring model. Rod catches sight of Nathalie while he's at a diner, and at first, it looks like he's stalking her, but it turns out they went to high school together, and after some strained chit-chat, they make a date at a Vietnamese restaurant (which must have paid Nguyen to include some long sweeping takes of the restaurant's interior), and so begins their romance, which takes up the first half of the movie. Rod, who pays attention to the dismal news about the environment that is playing on TVs around him all the time, becomes a Silicon Valley millionaire and starts an ecology-friendly company; Nathalie gets a gig as a model for Victoria's Secret. They wind up spending the weekend in Half Moon Bay at a pumpkin festival, and the morning after they consummate their relationship, bird attacks begin, not just against Rod and Nathalie, but all over the place. The birds, mostly eagles and vultures, flutter and hover and occasionally expel some liquid that causes fires and explosions. The last half of the film follows the couple as they join up with another couple and hit the road to escape from and do battle with the birds, and encounter others, including a tree-hugger who lives in the woods and two orphan children they take under their wings.
[Spoilers ahead] There are obvious parallels to Hitchcock's THE BIRDS in that two Californians awkwardly couple up, sexual tension seems to trigger the attacking flock of birds, children wind up in harm's way, there's a fiery scene at a gas station (see below), the hero's name is the same as the lead actor in The Birds (Rod Taylor) and the attacks mysteriously stop for no apparent reason. Unfortunately, for a movie selling itself with the words "shock and terror," the bird effects are just laughable. It looks like primitive video game graphics were laid them over the film, so you end up having people swatting the air or swinging clothes hangers in the air as these ridiculous bird images hover in front of them. There is never a moment of shock or terror in the whole film because no one ever seems in danger, even though people do die, with at least one death copied directly from THE BIRDS. For me, the effects are the one thing for which I can't excuse the director.
It's the rest of the stuff that makes this a truly good bad-movie experience. In the acting realm, Alan Bagh as Rod has taken the brunt of the criticism, and he does often seem like a wooden sleepwalker in the first half (the way the poor guy walks down the street makes you wonder if he just learned how to walk). But he grew on me, becoming a major contributor to the dreamlike, almost surreal tone that the film takes on, and he does become more realistically energetic in the second half. Whitney Moore gives arguably a worse performance; her facial expressions are more natural, but she has trouble expressing emotions—during the opening scenes, I couldn't tell whether she was happy, upset or non-committal about Bagh's pestering, and that emotional flatness mostly continues throughout. As for getting the cover of Victoria's Secret—that's never gonna happen for her (not because of her looks but because of her drab affect). I feel bad about criticizing the supporting actors—let’s just call them amateurs and move on.
To touch on just a few of the high/low points, some brought to my attention by the Rifftrax guys, who made the difference in my appreciation of the film: lots of driving and parking footage; a news anchor who discusses the dying off of arctic animals "due to the difficulty of finding enough food, such as seals"; Alan Bagh slurring the words "solar panels"; the complete lack of erotic chemistry between Our Couple during their tame lovemaking scene; Damien Carter's performance of a song called "Hangin’ Out with My Family" while Our Couple gamely hops around on a dance floor—sample lyric: "Then Thelma starts to dancin' and Grandma starts to prancin' / To make sure that the fellas don’t try any glancin'"; one woman is fatally attacked by a bird while she is squatting in the desert having a bowel movement; at Rod's office, an announcement is made that the company has been sold for a billion dollars, making them all rich, and we are treated to an endless scene of a dozen or so people applauding, and then applauding some more; Rod's basketball buddy pumping his arms up and down, exclaiming, "A day without sex is a day wasted" (I was sort of hoping that he and Rod might get a little handsy after the game); any scene with Nathalie's mom.
I can't quite put my finger on why this awful movie is so fun to watch. Part of it is undoubtedly the "I could make a better movie than this" aspect. Part of it is the sincerity of both the writing (Nguyen thinks he's making an important point about climate change and the environment) and the acting, in particular Bagh and Adam Sessa as his buddy. Criticizing them feels like yelling at a puppy trying its best to climb the stairs. As noted earlier, the Rifftrax crew do a splendid job providing comic commentary to this film and I highly recommend watching their version first. Thanks to them, mumbling "solar panels" has become a tick with me. The sequel, by the way, is just as bad but not as much fun.
