The topic of poisonous masculinity has been across the pop cultural block so many instances lately that — as the subject of a movie not less than — it’s beginning to really feel a bit drained. However go away it to Australia, a rustic that has produced a heroic variety of twisted movies, to ship a brand new and disturbing exploration of this oft-explored concept with Birdeater. The movie is the directing debut of Jack Clark and Jim Weir, and the Aussie duo pretty drowns us in environment, pulling visible and aural cues from horror and utilizing them to inform a nerve-jangling story of emotional abuse, gaslighting and, most significantly, cruelly manipulative and dangerously laddish male conduct.
Whereas Clark and Weir have directorial fashion to spare, it’s the script, credited to simply Clark, the place the wheels threaten to come back off. Not content material to weave a straight-ahead story concerning the secrets and techniques and lies that flip a bachelor celebration into an Outback nightmare, the movie persistently withholds essential data which retains us intriguingly off-balance however then provides clues — usually in seemingly throwaway dialogue — that solely partially fulfill our want for solutions.
By dropping too many crumbs and pulling too many rugs, Birdeater turns into overlong and will be irritating. But it surely nonetheless weaves a heck of a spell because it isolates an unlikable group of Aussie lads in a distant cabin that turns into a Petri dish for a sure breed of monstrous males.
‘Birdeater’ Is an Aussie Thriller with Throwbacks to the Australian New Wave
A bride-to-be joins her personal fiance’s bachelor celebration within the distant Australian Outback. Because the festivities spiral into beer-soaked chaos, uncomfortable particulars about their relationship are uncovered, turning the celebration right into a feral nightmare.
- Launch Date
-
January 10, 2025
- Director
-
Jack Clark
, Jim Weir - Runtime
-
113 Minutes
- Forged
-
Mackenzie Fearnley
, Shabana Azeez
, Ben Hunter
, Jack Bannister
, Clementine Anderson
, Alfie Gledhill
, Harley Wilson - Studio(s)
-
Fax Machine
, Breathless Movies
, 4 Leg movies
- The filmmakers create and maintain a really unsettling environment.
- It traffics in topical themes of poisonous masculinity and abusive relationships.
- The performances are all good with Ben Hunter a standout.
- It introduces attention-grabbing concepts however would not actually discover them.
- It will get too frantic in the direction of the tip.
- It presents as a horror movie however isn’t a horror movie.
If Birdeater’s story of near-madness in a faraway nook of Australia reminds one of many seminal 1971 thriller Wake in Fright, Clark and Weir agree. In truth, a poster for Ted Kotcheff’s Australian New Wave traditional makes a cameo early-on in Birdeater. And but their movie can be a nightmarish riff on Thomas Vinterberg’s 1998 masterpiece, The Celebration. However as a substitute of a sixtieth birthday celebration that descends into disappointment and chaos, Birdeater activates a bachelor celebration that ostensibly celebrates the love between Louie (Mackenzie Fearnley) and his fiancé Irene (Shabana Azeez).
Earlier than the celebration even begins, we discover there’s one thing off about their relationship: Irene appears to undergo from intense separation anxiousness, which she treats with a sedative meant to subdue animals. And after she falls right into a drug-induced slumber, Louie leaves their condo to golf or grasp along with his mates.
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Together with his candy and rubbery face that means nothing nefarious may presumably be afoot, Fearnley is well-cast, so when Louie provides to take Irene to his weekend bachelor celebration within the Outback, we’re momentarily tempted to assume the most effective of it. However even in its quieter moments, Clark and Weir scold us for assuming the most effective in anybody. Editor Ben Anderson’s fast cuts and odd rhythms maintain us on edge, whereas DP Roger Stonehouse’s grainy pictures counsel nothing good will come of this weekend. And it’s all tied collectively by Andreas Dominguez’s hardworking and eclectic rating that pours nightmare gas onto an already rising bonfire of hysteria.
Secrets and techniques and Lies at an Outback Bachelor Social gathering
Louie’s bachelor celebration contains what he calls “our nearest and our dearest,” a vaguely nameless bunch apart from Dylan, performed with vast eyes and unstable, wild card power by a magnetic Ben Hunter. Dylan is probably the most harmful of the celebrants, not solely as a result of he arrives with ketamine capsules and a blow-up doll, however as a result of his merciless dinner desk toast helps open the spigot of revelations that slowly tease out — amongst different lies — the true nature of Louie and Irene’s relationship.
Certainly, Birdeater isn’t a movie in the hunt for up to date social targets to shoot at. Not solely are poisonous masculinity, co-dependency, and emotional abuse depicted, so is gaslighting, which isn’t beneath Louie’s Christian good friend Charlie (Jack Bannister), who may be mendacity about his virginity to his equally religious fiancé Grace (Clementine Anderson).
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All these actual and related points, after all, usually overlap and Clark and Weir cleverly maintain us questioning which one will totally clarify the scar on the aspect of Louie’s head, the shock look of Irene’s doable ex-boyfriend, the bisexual Sam (Harley Wilson), and why Irene doesn’t have a cellphone. However the filmmakers additionally stack the deck too excessive with too many teasing questions contained in an excessively wordy script with nothing bigger to say about any of those issues, even when they do deserve reward for shoehorning all of them into one unnerving movie. Birdeater, then, is extra a triumph of filmmaking ability than a long-overdue reckoning of pernicious male conduct.
The Girls of ‘Birdeater’ Are Given Brief Shrift
Such a give attention to the lads means there’s little room to contemplate Irene’s plight. Each feminine characters listed below are underwritten and whereas one can argue that giving brief shrift to Irene in favor of the lads is kinda the purpose, she’s nonetheless given little company apart from the suggestion that she chooses to be with Louie as a result of she wants a inexperienced card.
There’s additionally the enterprise of the movie’s ambiguous ending, which augers the chance that Irene isn’t as helpless as she appears. Possibly it implies that Clark and Weir, a promising duo whose subsequent movie needs to be met with a lot anticipation, saved their greatest twist for final. However given the full-tilt nature of this completed, if thematically wobbly drama, they did it for a similar purpose that males do a number of issues: as a result of it could be cool.
Birdeater, produced by Breathless Movies, Fax Machine and 4 Leg Movies and distributed by Darkish Sky Movies, opens in theaters and on digital platforms January 10.