Official synopsis: A bride-to-be (Shabana Azeez as Irene) is invited to join her own fiancé’s (Mackenzie Fearnley as Louie) bachelor party on a remote property in the Australian outback. But as the festivities spiral into beer-soaked chaos, uncomfortable details about their relationship are exposed, and the celebration soon becomes a feral nightmare.
Australian feature Birdeater from cowriters/codirectors Jack Clark and Jim Weir has been making the rounds on the genre-film and horror film festival circuits before its imminent wider release, but as a proponent of both slow-burn horror and “But is it horror?” films, I think many feat-fare aficionados may find the film lacking in scares. It succeeds, though, in burrowing under the skin as a highly discomfiting drama with thriller elements as it explores both toxic relationships and toxic masculinity.
Birdeater is one of the recent crop of genre films that gives viewers no one or almost no one to truly side with, as the bachelor party attendees of young men and women, alleged friends, can barely get along with one another. Louie (Mackenzie Fearnley) and Irene (Shabana Azeez) are engaged but it is made clear early on that their relationship is a highly toxic one. The invitees — substance-abusing ne’er-do-well Dylan (Ben Hunter), virginal Christian couple agitated Charlie (Jack Bannister) and his girlfriend Grace (Clementine Anderson), mysterious Murph (Alfie Gledhill), and sexually free Sam (Harley Wilson) — have varying degrees of unease between each other. The result is a brewing stew of lies and secrets simmering to a boiling point.
It takes some time before anything of real importance is exposed, so the first two acts are mainly watching and listening to the characters argue with each other and snipe at one another. Clark and Weir feed us some bread crumbs along the way, and the third act does deliver some major reveals, but viewers hoping for a strong climax may well feel less than satisfied.
Birdeater certainly delivers in its scathing takes on, as mentioned before, toxic relationships and toxic masculinity. The ensemble cast members all give fine performances portraying believable — if familiar, in the cinematic sense — characters. The dialogue is intriguing, and some unexpected sequences add greatly to the almost constant sense of unease.
Overall, Clark and Weir show impressive talent in their feature film debut together, and although their use of ambiguity and drug-induced dream sequences — along with some editing, pacing, and sound design choices that can feel overdone at times — hampered the flow for me on occasion, Birdeater is a unique work that is certainly well worth a watch.
Dark Sky Films presents Birdeater in theaters and on digital platforms from January 10, 2025.
