Overlook Film Festival 2024 – Birdeater is one of those films that knows how to use restraint, before it snowballs and edges true horror territory with doses of surrealism. Yet, despite its many sequences that feel like a bad acid trip, the feature is anchored by the rot festering within a relationship that’s the premise for the film.

Written and directed by Jack Clark and Jim Weir, the film stars Mackenzie Fearnley as Louie and Shabana Azeez as Irene. Louie and Irene are on the cusp of getting married, but within the first 15 minutes, it’s clear something is up with their relationship, bubbling beneath the surface. Well before their many relationship woes are revealed, Louie convinces Irene to tag along to a weekend bucks party in the woods. They’re joined by Louie’s eruptive friend Dylan (Ben Hunter), Christian couple Charlie (Jack Bannister) and Grace (Clementine Anderson), Irene’s old pal Sam (Harley Wilson), and Murph (Alfie Gledhill).

Not only do Irene and Louie have serious relationship issues involving pills and co-dependency, among other problems, but there’s a lot of tension among this friends group. That becomes quite apparent the more that they drink and the more that they take drugs. Much of it explodes during a powerful dinner table scene where everything surfaces, kicked off by a brutally honest speech by Dylan, which is anything but a tribute Louie. Maybe he’s not such a stand-up guy after all.

Via a poster, there’s a not-so-subtle nod to another Australian film, Wake in Fright, from 1971. Both films deal with toxic masculinity, even if the men in Birdeater know that their behavior and some of their views are problematic. In fact, one of them makes a comment at one point about “old fashioned” thinking. There’s also the fact that two women, Irene and Grace, invade a traditionally male space and have to deal with some pretty abhorrent behavior that the guys try to pass off as mere jokes.

If Birdeater has one major flaw, it’s the pacing. There’s a lot of build up, in fact, too much build up until the movie gets to the heart of the matter, that being the serious issues within Louie and Irene’s relationship. Not only that, but it takes quite a long time until the horror ever really kicks in, until the friends turn downright bonkers and feral. In fact, it feels like this movie really doesn’t hit its mark until about the halfway point. By the end, it turns into a bizarre nightmare with a color palate that feels both hallucinatory and blood-soaked.

If anything, Birdeater explores the perils of a toxic relationship and the effect it has on a broader friends group. It just takes a little too long for those secrets to surface. But when they do, that’s when the film gets good, transforming into one trippy ride edging something dangerous and dark,

7 Out of 10