How to make a sequel? Let us count the ways. There’s the Go Big Or Go Home method, where everything has to be bigger and better than the first movie or everyone will know the reason why. There’s the Continuation method, where the story picks up where it leaves off and nothing really changes. There’s the Act Two method, where, no matter what happens in the first movie, everything has to go to pot so Act Three will be truly redeeming. Many sequels, of course, go for a combination of these methods, with or without some recycled schtick depending on the franchise.
Then there’s 2013’s Birdemic 2: The Resurrection, which employs the Let’s Try Harder method, which means everything that made the first movie great or at least memorable is trotted out for a second go-round, only on purpose this time.
To be sure, though, there are some differences. Anyone who remembers the first Birdemic knows those venomous birds never died. They just hovered verrrrrry slowly over the ocean. Well, they’re back with a vengeance, guys, and this time it’s raining blood. There are also zombies in the local graveyard for some reason.
The movie opens with a guy, Bill (Thomas Favaloro) walking down Hollywood Boulevard. For. Five. Minutes. Solid. Something about that walk reminds me of Amy Grant’s “Big Yellow Taxi” music video, or maybe The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” but I can’t imagine why because those walks were way more fun. 😉
Anyway, Bill stops in at a pizza place, where the hostess shows him to a table, and just as in the first movie, the sound continuity completely tanks. Also, just as in the first movie, when the lady gestures toward the table it’s supremely awkward. Only this time the lady is Gloria (Chelsea Turnbo), a struggling actress who’s trying to make it big in pictures. More on her later.
Bill is at this pizza place to meet Rod (Alan Bagh) and Nathalie (Whitney Moore) from, yes, the first movie, and over a pitcher of Budweiser so flat it could be iced tea, Rod promises to back Bill’s new movie, Sunset Dreams and writes a check for one hundred thousand dollars on the spot, with the proviso that Nathalie can have the lead role.
Apparently Bill has a short memory, because after securing financial backing with a studio and a very long scene of him clapping like Flipper, Bill meets Gloria right next to Tippi Hedren’s star on the Walk of Fame and offers her the lead role of Kim. Nathalie doesn’t seem too put out, though, because she and Rod start double-dating with Bill and Gloria. Among their outings is a trip to Santa Cataline, where the guy who sang “Hangin’ Out With My Family” in the first Birdemic is now plying his trade at a club on the island. Oh, and Nathalie’s mom shows up, too.
The birds will come back sometime. Honest. Only in this instance they pop out of the La Brea Tarpits while blood rains from the sky, and locked doors don’t seem to stop them, because they attack Rod, Bill, and so on while they film Sunset Dreams. Then they move on to three topless women who just happen to be filming what appears to be a pornographic horror flick.
Yep. It’s a brand new day, folks. And this time our heroes have an RV to escape in instead of an ancient Ford Aerostar. Must be nice if anyone wants to take a nap. They still whip hangers at the birds, though, and they’re no more effective than they were in the first movie. Or against those zombies who pop out of the graveyard. Or the cavepeople who pop out of the La Brea Tarpits. It’s all kind of a big mess, but the good guys have time to grab a Coke from a Pepsi machine at a hotel in Pasadena and watch Will the Screenwriter get clocked by the birds before floating facedown in the hotel pool. What a day.
Yeah, Birdemic 2: The Resurrection is a piece of crap, only it’s intentional crap albeit with a slightly more polished overall look because funding. Clearly the powers that be thought that lightning strikes twice in the same spot, which we all know it doesn’t unless one’s name is Roy Sullivan. Only problem is, for elements to work the second time around they had to work the first time, and even then things can be dicey.
And yes, I’m thinking of Doc Brown building those scale models of places in the Back To the Future movies. It helps when the jokes and the actors know what their doing and the movie has a clear direction.
Whereas, the sole descriptor the Birdemic 2 cast came up with to describe Nguyen’s writing is “interesting.” Odds are good they were just being nice.
The biggest problem with this movie is that there’s so much time spent watching these characters go from place to place with no direction in sight. Do we really need to see Bill and Gloria driving around Hollywood and stopped at stop signs with Bill making a super-hammy creeper face for what feels like interminable minutes? Not really. The whole Bill-Gloria arc is creepy anyway because Bill seems to use casting as a meet market. He makes the creeper face a lot.
Plus, the film is way too preachy about global warming. It’s literally everywhere. Toilet paper is bad because it kills trees. The birds are mad because of industrialization. It’s so token and needless.
Not surprisingly, the reviews were even less kind to this installment than they were to the first one. Variety, for instance, called it a “less transfixing whatsit.” Bluray.com was a bit more expansive:
The acting is catastrophic, editing was likely achieved while blindfolded, the science is dubious, the ecological message is blurred, and the death birds arrive in more of a cameo role, refused their rightful place as the primary antagonist (once again summoned after a chaste sex scene, though the script keeps blaming global warming for their arrival). The addition of zombies and Neanderthals is more distracting than vital to the madness of the picture, attempting to make the endeavor more meme-worthy, aiming for slapstick in a movie that’s already spent its allotment of silliness. Nguyen also exits without an ending, though that really shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Birdemic 2 is OK to have in the background and that’s all, but rumor has it the film has nothing on its follow-up. That, however, is another story for another time.
A little housekeeping post is on the way on Friday. Thanks for reading, all, and have a good one…
BIrdemic 2: The Resurrection is available to own on DVD from Amazon.
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