Review: Birdeater – A bird in the hand
Directed by Jack Clark and Jim Weir
Starring Mackenzie Fearnley, Shabana Azeez, Ben Hunter
9/10
Birdeater is the movie that happens when every single named character in the script is an unreliable narrator. A gripping psychological mystery from beginning to end, this is a tour de force of modern Australian filmmaking that deserves a place in the pantheon of classic horror the nation has produced.
With a disarmingly simple plot—a woman attends her fiancé’s buck’s party on isolated farmland an hour or two out of Sydney—Birdeater is an examination of the easy yet ultimately damaging lies and deceptions close friends tell each other and themselves, escalating tension to a stomach-churning degree with minimal catharsis.
Shabana Azeez, as Irene, gives an astonishing portrayal of a very complex character. Azeez could have very easily exaggerated Irene into a caricature of an English fish out of Australian water, breaking into a tight-knit group of friends, but her acting is much more subtle than that. Even after the audience is given her backstory in the third act, Irene’s motivations and thinking are still as much guesswork well into the end credits as when the character was first introduced.
Ben Hunter as Dylan, the fiancé’s best friend, brings a brooding, unpredictable menace to his role, recalling Eric Bana as Chopper Read all those years ago. From his very first scene, Hunter is unsettling and mesmerising, yet by the end of the piece, his character is possibly the most honest and upfront on-screen.
Even though Birdeater generally conveys a growing dread over the course of its runtime, there is a surprising amount of humour in place—mostly of the nervous, awkward variety. In attempting to placate an inner unease, the writing and cameras linger long on moments that stopped being funny far earlier, for both the audience and on-screen characters.
The direction, pacing, and editing are all in top form. Birdeater flows from scenes that are noisy, chaotic, and overwhelming in energy and emotion, rising to crescendos that purposefully never quite pay off, back down to other set pieces where the movie slows down and almost completely stops, and quiet moments of contemplation where profound, potentially life-changing discussions occur.
At these moments, as the music, sound, and even dialogue drift to nothing, we are left with the silence of the Australian bush, mostly at night. It is almost cliché by now that the country, the bush, and the outback are all characters themselves in the nation’s cinema, but with Birdeater, this approximation rings very true. The darkness speaks as loudly as any other dialogue could.
Birdeater combines dread, disconnection, addiction, a splash of surrealism, and a very lived-in set of friends that probably should have stopped contact after high school, with the entire cast bringing their best. With its complex yet unhurried untangling of character, this film will definitely bear repeat viewing. Absolute powerhouse cinema.
PAUL MEEK