2013’s Birdemic 2 picks up four years after the end of the first film. Society has recovered from the vicious bird attacks. Humans and bird are once again living as friends. Actually, no one seems to have learned a thing from the last movie because global warming is still out of control, blood rain is falling in California, and a woman is attacked by what she calls a “giant jumbo jellyfish.” This can only mean that nature is getting ready to fight back once again.
Rod (Alan Bagh) was one of the few people to survive the previous Birdemic. He is still rich and he is still dating Nathalie (Whitney Moore). They adopted Tony (Colton Osborne), the little boy who they rescued during the first film. At one point, Tony mentions that his sister Susan is now dead, having died as a result of eating the fish that Rod caught in the first film. (Apparently, this was an ad lib from actor Colton Osborne and, since director James Nguyen doesn’t believe in multiple takes, it made it into the film.) Rod invests in a movie being directed by Bill (Thomas Favaloro) and starring Bill’s new girlfriend, Gloria (Chelsea Turnbo). In fact, Bill and Gloria pretty much act exactly the same way that Rod and Nathalie acted in the first film, which feels a bit redundant since Birdemic 2 already features Rod and Nathalie.
Anyway, there’s a lot of scenes in the film that are meant to act as a commentary on Hollywood, with craven studio people showing that they are not capable of understanding Bill’s artistic vision. At one point, Bill talks about how he directed a movie called Replica. He and Gloria also pay a visit to Tippi Hedren’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame because it wouldn’t be a James Nguyen film without a Tippi Hedren reference.
Unfortunately, a blood rain causes the resurrection of several birds and two cavemen from the La Brea tar pit and soon, filming on Bill’s movie is delayed by the cast and crew running for their lives. It’s pretty much the same as the first movie, except that the birds are now bad CGI as opposed to clip art and, for some reason, there are also zombies involved. Why are the zombies there? Who knows?
Birdemic 2 was made to capitalize on the camp success of Birdemic and several scenes from the original film are recreated for the sequel, right down to several pointless walking scenes, another boardroom celebration scene and another scene in which the female lead strips down to her underwear and asking her boyfriend if he likes what he sees. Damien Carter also makes another appearance, singing a different song and leading a new dance party. (Nathalie is still the best dancer in the Birdemic films.)
Birdemic 2 is a bit more self-aware than the first film, which means that some of the attempted humor is presumably intentional. Unfortunately, the charm of the first Birdemic was to be found in just how cluelessly earnest it was. James Nguyen sincerely believed he was making a good film with the first one. With the second one, he seems to be trying to re-capture something that he didn’t really realize that he had captured in the first place. That said, even with all of the deliberate camp, there’s enough lectures about climate change to leave little doubt that, at heart, Nguyen was still taking this film far more seriously than anyone else on the planet.
He certainly takes his films more seriously than the people who appear in them. Much as in the first film, Whitney Moore struggles to keep a straight face and it’s obvious that many of her co-stars were specifically hamming it up to see what they could get away with. Alan Bagh, for his part, remains as unexpressive but strangely likable as ever.
Birdemic 2 tries but, in the end, there’s no beating the original!
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Through the Shattered Lens 