
Australian horror-comedy ‘Birdeater’ embodies unspoken anxieties
A bachelor party becomes the venue for long-held secrets coming to light
"Birdeater" dissects the complicated interpersonal relationships within a seemingly close-knit friend group.
Courtesy of MPI Media
Words by Siddhant Adlakha
The thrills and guffaws of Australian horror-comedy Birdeater are designed to hit close to home. It isn't quite horror in the traditional sense—there's no real genre bent to it, nothing gory or supernatural—but its tale of an intimate, mixed-gender buck's party (or bachelor party) is deeply unnerving, revealing gradual cracks along the fault-lines of its seemingly close-knit friend group. It is also, aesthetically speaking, a wild ride, pushing everything from color to rhythm just a hair past what feels natural. Before you realize it, the movie crawls beneath your skin.
Young, engaged couple Louie (Mackenzie Fearnley) and Irene (Shabana Azeez)—a white Australian, and a British South Asian living in Australia on a visa—have what appears to be a straightforward romance. Directors Jack Clark and Jim Weir unveil their relationship slowly (and casually) in a lengthy opening montage spanning days—or weeks, or months; it all feels routine—but the more we see of their daily life, the more something feels amiss. Day after day, Louie seems to spend more time away from home, and he lies to Irene about his whereabouts. He claims to visit his father, though he ends up playing night golf, but he always hands Irene a glass of water before leaving. Okay! It's a sweet gesture, and what couple doesn't have their white lies? Then again, the longer this montage goes on, the more details come to light, as we're slowly lured into their dynamic. Before long, it's revealed that each glass of water is accompanied by a pill that knocks Irene out, which she takes willingly each time Louie leaves their front door.
The film piques curiosity but delays its answers, allowing an uncanniness to set in. As the couple discusses their pending nuptials, it always seems like they're talking around an elephant in the room. Could it have something to do with the pronounced scar along Louie's temple? Perhaps, but before we're given any details, Louie begrudgingly invites Irene to his rural bachelor party-getaway with a small group of friends, and even ensures that one of his pals, Charlie (Jack Bannister), brings his religious, traditional girlfriend Grace (Clementine Anderson) so Irene can have feminine company. It's another sweet gesture, though Louie's accommodating nature is sprinkled with something subtly disquieting, a kind of anger or frustration buried deep down, which Fearnley releases in hints and spurts.

Harley Wilson as Sam and Shabana Azeez as Irene in "Birdeater."
Courtesy of MPI Media
This is arguably the real horror of Birdeater: people's subtly unnerving nature, bubbling quietly beneath the surface, going undiscussed until it erupts. It's something the film embodies too, each time it introduces a new character, and a new interpersonal dynamic between its friend group. For instance, when Charlie reunites with his and Louie's common friend Dylan (Ben Hunter)—a brash, off-putting hedonist Charlie hasn't seen in years—their joking barbs are laced with pulsing tensions.
Joined by another friend, the good-natured Murph (Alfie Gledhill), and by Irene's charismatic ex Sam (Harley Wilson)—a recipe for intense jealousies—the group drinks and frolics around their getaway in the woods, with some childishly raunchy games involving blow-up dolls and leather outfits. But come night time, dinners and party games begin to exacerbate whatever tensions we've been sensing. These are people desperate to get long-held secrets out of their system, but each time there's a chance to deflect, or make merry—detours unveiled through even more lengthy montages—these unacknowledged mysteries get buried even deeper. There's no need to talk when you're opening a cold one with the boys (who, after all, will be boys).
Without revealing too much, the movie's secrets are, on paper, no more special than those within your average, hyper-masculine friend group who've been pals since college. But in practice, they've been allowed to fester so long that each character's persona, carefully constructed, depends on maintaining a façade of functional adulthood, despite their arrested development. The aforementioned pills, it turns out, are a part of this front, and part of a codependency that neither Louie nor Irene will acknowledge. They'd rather be mutually manipulative while smiling for the world, but Louie's happiness, and Irene's visa status, are entirely dependent on maintaining this fragile appearance of domestic bliss.

"Birdeater" explores how underlying tension and repressed emotions can boil to the surface.
Courtesy of MPI Media
As the night wears on, each secret threatens to rattle the friend group, as the movie oscillates between hyper-activity and unnervingly long takes, which focus on monologues of characters stepping gingerly around the truth, hoping someone else will say what they've been thinking, or will assume or intuit it from their clues. It isn't so much a game as it is a familiar plausible deniability, in an effort to walk the razor-thin line between maintaining group dynamics while letting reality have its say (whether for altruistic reasons, or out of selfish pettiness).
The more that drugs and alcohol get involved, the more the group's unspoken tensions threaten to be voiced, and the more that Birdeater pushes forward with its debonair sensibilities. It condenses entire hours of indulgence and interpersonal anxiety into sequences that are both tightly edited and keenly observed, with a visual saturation and exposure pushed just enough to feel heightened, and sensitive—like a mildly metallic taste on the tongue, which you may not realize is blood. This is especially true of shots that linger for longer than is pleasant or agreeable, gradually zooming in until they're way too close. But when tensions do finally spill over, the movie goes balls-to-the-wall with its nearly excessive use of footage and coverage, becoming erratic and magnificently hyper-charged.

From left, Alfie Gledhill as Murph and Mackenzie Fearnley as Louie in "Birdeater."
Courtesy of MPI Media
Above all else, it's a visceral film that captures what it feels like to keep secrets close to your chest, lest they spill out and reveal something sinister about you, or about your relationship. The biggest secret of all is knowing yourself this well and still hiding it from the world.
Published on January 15, 2025
Words by Siddhant Adlakha
Siddhant Adlakha is a critic and filmmaker from Mumbai, though he now lives in New York City. They're more similar than you'd think. Find him at @SiddhantAdlakha on Twitter