BIRDEATER (2023) Review by Steve Kirkham

BIRDEATER (2023)
3 stars
Blue Finch Film Releasing. Select Cinemas 9th May. Digital 26th May

Louie (Mackenzie Fearnley) and Irene (Shabana Azeez) are engaged and living together. Though it is clear early on that their relationship may not be all it seems — he often claims to be working but is instead going to the driving range or hanging with his mates. This feeds into her separation anxiety which she dulls by taking sleeping pills when he is gone.

Then Louie comes up with the idea that she can come to his “Buck’s” party (what we would call or stag do or bachelor party), despite this being out of the norm.

The weekend arrives and they are staying in a remote cabin in the woods. The friends start to turn up. There is Dylan (Ben Hunter) who appears to be a bit of a nutter and on something, Charlie (Jack Bannister) with the only other girl, his fiancée Grace (Clementine Anderson), who are both devout Christians plus, oddly, an old friend of Irene, Sam (Harley Wilson), who she may have ‘history’ with.

Things seem tense between the group from the get go. After much pratting about and boozing, as you would expect, they have an evening meal. Louie has something planned with Murph but before they can do their thing, Dylan makes a speech, which denigrates his supposed friend. Louie tries to stop him from saying too much. Then he reveal something about the first time Louie saw Irene which doesn’t exactly go down well. Awkward. Is it a joke?

They decide to play a game — Paranoia, all about questions, answers and secrets. Which just increases the tensions between them all. Things get toxic and truly out of hand… and freaky.

An effective psychological thriller from Oz – written by Jack Clark and co-directed by Jack Clark and Jim Weir — who go by the sobriquet Fax Machine some reason. They create an uneasy atmosphere as fractures appear in the group dynamic. I think your appreciation of this will depend on your tolerance of, initially, people basically sitting around talking and interacting. I found the first half a bit slow. It is well acted, though I am not sure it is entirely successful, being more a drama about relationships and a study of toxic masculinity. It’s all quite odd and could be seen as Lynchian as the narrative goes off the rails in the last half hour into hallucinogenic, drug fuelled madness. The nightmarish story leads to an enigmatic ending.

It is really well shot by Roger Stonehouse and has an “interesting” score by Andreas Dominguez

Steve Kirkham