SXSW 2024 Birdeater Review- Stylish And Grounded Look At Male Toxicity

Australian Horror is a brand all its own. There is a goofy charm to it that masks the truly nasty underbelly of the greater message. Last year’s Talk To Me was a genuinely scary movie that avoided being one-note by giving us compelling and quirky teenagers in peril. 2017’s Boar is a deliciously zany creature feature that exemplifies everything the brand has to offer. Filmmaking duo Jack Clark and Jim Weir deliver a skewering indictment on male masculinity and group rot through a gaggle of troubled and deeply unlikable men. Birdeater is a punishing film about the lengths men will go to justify their behavior and the women who sometimes enable them.

A young bride-to-be is invited on a boy’s trip along with her ex-boyfriend and one of the men’s wives. It’s a recipe for disaster that presents itself early. Tensions run high before they even get out of town, and they only get worse. As one man acts as a crusader of honesty, the other men have to face some uncomfortable truths. This is not a group of “good” men. These are users, abusers, and worse, as we later find out. Even the truth tellers seem to be more concerned with revenge than writing any wrongs.

Engaged couple Irene(Shabana Azeez) and Louie(Mackenzie Fernley) are a walking red flag. It’s clear early this is not a healthy relationship. However hard they may try to project the perfect partnership, deeply troubling signs show through. A crack of co-dependency here, and worse, a raging case of control there. Before we can unpack just how bad things are, Louis convinces a reluctant Irene to accompany him on his Bucks weekend. He reasons that she will be more comfortable with him around, read: he needs to keep a close eye on her lest she accidentally grows a spine. He has another motivation that exposes just how manipulative he is.

At the cabin in the woods, they are joined by Irene’s friend Sam(Harley Wilson), occasionally devout friend Charlie(Jack Bannister), and his pious fiance Grace(Clementine Anderson), Louis’ explosive friend Dylan(Ben Hunter), who he immediately regrets inviting, and up for anything Murph(Alfie Gledhill). The party atmosphere breaks down fast. Clark and Weir hold their audience in animated suspense as the more we know, the more uncomfortable the guests and the viewers become. Ick doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Birdeater really shines once the wheel metaphorically comes off. Dread drenches every scene, and with each word, the horror of the situation becomes clearer. This isn’t horror in the traditional slasher or ghost sense but more in the vein of Karen Kusama’s The Invitation. There is something really wrong with these people, but no one is talking about it until one character blows the lid off of things in frustration. Birdeater uses traditional thriller tropes to drive home the situational horror and force us to examine hard truths.

Louis comes across initially as doting if overly hands-on, and little by little, the layers are peeled back until his true nature is exposed. He is never physically violent; in fact, he seems almost pathologically allergic to physical intimidation, and yet Fearnly makes him profoundly scary. He vacillates between gaslighting and love bombing with a practiced hand. This is a guy who has used this technique before and will again. He’s the guy that initially everyone thinks is “such a nice guy” before they realize just how manipulative he really is.

The couple’s toxicity is intensified by the odd friend dynamic in this group. I was never quite sure if any of them liked each other, and if they did, why? The only two people to sound an alarm are Sam, who has motivations of his own, and Dylan, who is so volatile that it is hard to accept that he is the voice of reason. The stakes are raised higher and higher as Birdeater combines expected horror devices with psycho-drama to keep us riveted to the screen.

The worse things get, the wackier things feel, which is a testament to Clark and Weir, who know when to apply pressure and when to let the tension out. It keeps the audience on its toes and perpetually uneasy. The smartly used horror elements show us exactly how toxic traits are nurtured when they are ignored or, worse yet, excused. This bizarre validation of bad behavior is a complicated watch.

An undercurrent of the group’s makeup speaks to how and why the group came to be. Class and money kept the group glued together and continued to be used to excuse some of the worst behaviors. Louis has been a power broker from the beginning. The group orbits him like the sun, and he pulls others in using any method necessary. Like a black hole, it sucks everything in.

Drugs and alcohol fuel an already tense situation. The less sober the group becomes, the more sobering the situation becomes, or at least should become. Exquisite editing by Ben Anderson hammers home the grotesquely funny nature of a pivotal plot beat, deftly mixing in cartoon events with the dangerous. This group is unstable and out of control. Clark and Weir’s feature debut is stylish, with a unique voice and tone.

Although a surreal scene late in the film threatens to teeter into full-blown horror territory, Birdeater never falls off the cliff. It stays grounded in realism, letting us simmer in the depravity of this group’s history and Louis’ psychopathy.

Goliath Birdeaters are massive tarantula-like spiders from South America that eat everything from insects to small rodents and birds. They have razor-sharp fangs they use to inject potent neurotoxins into their prey, not unlike Louie, who feeds his bride-to-be sedatives constantly when she dares to act as if she might have an opinion of her own. Its subject matter could easily weigh down Birdeater. Instead, Clark and Weir manage to weave absurdist humor in when you need it most, allowing the film to glide along as most of the men’s lives have been—seamless, easy, and effortlessly.

Most impressive still is the refusal to offer easy answers. There is no resolution to be found here and no easy way out. The stunning final moments leave you stunned, feeling equally worried and optimistic. Clark and Weir are confident filmmakers with an important message to convey. Like 2019’s Swallow, Birdeater shows us abuse comes in many forms and can be destructive without raising a hand.

In some cases, control is surrendered, and other times, it is taken. Identities are formed through events for better or worse. They can make us moral, kind, trustworthy, and strong. They can just as easily make us monsters who have been convinced their whole life how great they were and now believe it so heartily there is no room for debate, even from those whose opinion we should value the most.

Find all our SXSW 2024 coverage here.