- Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
- Video Codec: AVC/MPEG-4
- Resolution: 1080p/24
- Audio Codec: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
- Subtitles: N/A
- Rating: Not Rated
- Region: A (B? C?)
- Discs: 1
- Studio: Severin Films/MPI Media Group
- Blu-ray Release Date: February 22, 2011
- List Price: $29.98
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Purchase Birdemic: Shock and Terror on Blu-ray at CD Universe
Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.com
Overall
[Rating:1/5]
The Film
[Rating:1/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:1/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:0.5/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:1.5/5]
Click thumbnails for high-resolution 1920X1080p screen captures
(Screen captures are lightly compressed with lossy JPEG thus are meant as a general representation of the content and do not fully reveal the capabilities of the Blu-ray format)
The Film
[Rating:1/5]
Birdemic: Shock and Terror is so bad it is downright laughable, which means, of course, it has “cult classic” written all over it. There s something to be said for someone who takes their own salary as a mid-level software salesman and goes out and fulfills their dream of making a film, which is exactly what James Nguyen, but anyone who compares Nguyen to Hitchcock simply because Birdemic has crazed birds in it ought to be beaten over the head with their own laserdisc copy of The Birds. Well, maybe not, but let’s be realistic, there hasn’t been a filmmaker as bad as Nguyen since Ed Wood, and even Ed Wood wasn’t this bad.
Birdemic is poorly written, badly acted, badly filmed, terribly recorded, and filled with some of the worst special effects you will ever see in a movie. Nguyen calls it a “romantic thriller.” I call it a comedy coming to a midnight showing near you.
The story goes that Rod (Alan Bagh), a software salesman from the Bay Area has just made a million-dollar deal, so, with all this confidence still in him, he happens to bump into an old classmate, Nathalie (Whitney Moore), who is now a hot lingerie model. Rod snags a date with her and the two hit it off, falling in love in just a couple of days, but suddenly the whole area comes under attack by maniacal birds and Rod and Nathalie must run for their lives, fighting for survival with a few other people they meet along the way.
Birdemic will bring you to tears – from laughing at it — long before it scares you from any “thrills” and that may be its only saving grace.
Video Quality
[Rating:1/5]
Where to begin with this transfer of Birdemic? The low budget production is certainly exposed on Blu-ray and I’m not certain the film benefits much at all from being transferred to high definition. This AVC/MPEG-4 encodement suffers from just about every bad thing you can think of. There is video noise, compression artifacts, aliasing, motion jutter, heavy grain, soft detail, out of focus shots, clipped white levels – in a word, it looks awful.
Audio Quality
[Rating:0.5/5]
As bad as the image looks, the audio may be even worse, as difficult as that may be to believe. The DTS-HD Master Audio lossless codec may truly be wasted on this soundtrack. It is very poorly recorded to begin with, with sound dropouts, wide swings in dynamics, terrible amounts of background noise often drowning out the dialogue and lots of clipping. Why exactly it is 5.1 when there is hardly anything going on in the surround channels is also rather perplexing.
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:1.5/5]
The supplements consist mainly of snippets of Q&A sessions and midnight screenings plus promotional materials for Birdemic in addition to the two completely unnecessary audio commentaries.
The supplements provided with this release are:
- Audio Commentary with Director James Nguyen
- Audio Commentary with Stars Alan Bagh and Whitney Moore
- Deleted Scene “Cave” with Optional Commentary (1.78:1; 1080p/24)
- Deleted Scene – “Taking a S%$t” (1.78:1; 1080p/24)
- Birdemic Experience Tour Featurette (1.78:1; 1080i/60)
- James Nguyen on “Movie Close Up” (1.33:1; 1080i/60)
- MOVIEHEAD: The James Nguyen Story Teaser (1.78:1; 1080p/24)
- Birdemic Experience Trailer (1.78:1; 1080p/24)
- Teaser Trailer (1.78:1; 1080p/24)
- Theatrical Trailer (1.78:1; 1080p/24)
- Electronic Press Kit (1.78:1; 1080i/60)
The Definitive Word
Overall:
[Rating:1/5]
Get out the popcorn, invite your friends over and turn off your brains, because this will be a laugh riot, just make sure you rent this disc rather than buy it – hey that rhymed!
Additional Screen Captures:
[amazon-product align=”right”]B004EI2NWW[/amazon-product]
Purchase Birdemic: Shock and Terror on Blu-ray at CD Universe
Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.com
Overall
[Rating:1/5]
The Film
[Rating:1/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:1/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:0.5/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:1.5/5]
