In Jack Clark and Jim Weir's BIRDEATER, a Aussie bride-to-be (Shabana Azeez) is invited to her fiance's (Mackenzie Fearnley) "bucks party" - a bachelor party to us in the States, but god, doesn't that just sound cooler?
She's not alone, as one of the boys also brings his girlfriend to this cabin in the Outback, but it's more of a friend-of-a-friend situation. Drinks flow, silliness inflates, but that's the thing about these kinds of nights: There's always a point of no return. The alcohol tips secrets over the edge. Once those come out, it's like trying to suck toothpaste back into the tube. It just can't happen.
What results is a nervous death of a thousand cuts. Every conversation grows tense, regardless of who's speaking to whom. Passive aggression becomes a de facto state and no one's coming out of this party socially unscathed. Hostile, squawking jazz pairs with a bipolar camera designed against comfort. It either swirls wildly around its subjects like a cracked-out carousel or stops still, unflinchingly observing the most excruciating social crucifixions.
And yet, this movie isn't A SERBIAN FILM, MARTYRS nor anything of that explicitly vicious ilk. What unsettles about BIRDEATER is how much these people inevitably remind me of folks I know. These portrayals bound between shifting perspectives and ideologies to a degree that makes it seem Weir and Clark refute each other's concerns about these people in real-time.
The movie debates itself on matters of social hierarchy, emotional abuse, consent, otherism and the simple, yet debilitating matter of leaving your '20s with something constructive to show for it, despite your hedonistic, paranoid, terrified efforts to the contrary.
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Watch BIRDEATER in theaters -
Albuquerque: Guild Cinema
Austin: Alamo Drafthouse Mueller Austin Mueller
Boston: Alamo Drafthouse Boston Seaport
Chicago: Alamo Drafthouse Wrigleyville
Columbus: Gateway Film Center
Dallas: Alamo Drafthouse Denton
Denver: Alamo Westminster
Los Angeles: Alamo Drafthouse Downtown Los Angeles
Los Angeles: Laemmle Glendale
New York: Alamo Drafthouse Lower Manhattan
New York: IFC Center
Phoenix: Harkins Gateway Pavilions
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Watch BIRDEATER on digital - JANUARY 17th
Apple TV
Fandango at Home (US)
Google Play (US & CA)
Microsoft Movies & TV (US & CA)
Prime Video (US)
