REVIEW: ‘Birdeater’ Points The Camera At Toxic Masculinity

In the directorial debut for Jack Clark and Jim Weir, Birdeater follows Irene, a bride-to-be who is invited to join her own fiancé’s buck party in a remote cottage in the Australian outback. But as the festivities spiral into beer-soaked chaos, exposing uncomfortable details. The celebration becomes a feral nightmare that no one expected.

Birdeater isn’t a movie for me as a survivor or other women who know all too well the pain of intimate partner violence. It’s for men. Men who make excuses for their friends and men who put on a charismatic facade around others but rip it off when they’re at home with a partner. The horror genre has tackled abuse. In fact, genre film is an expert vehicle for pulling apart the things that hurt us. Birdeater, however, separates itself from the crowd by using its genre explosion only in the third act.

The first two acts unravel a relationship that is breaking at the seams. Irene (Shabana Azeez) and Louie (Mackenzie Fearnley) look like an ideal couple. They’re recently engaged and their sweet romance is a mask they wear. But quickly, the audience learns that Louie drugs Irene every time he leaves the house.

Only it’s not done in secret. Irene accepts it, and right off the bat, the tension in this relationship is ominous and palatable. When Irene begins questioning their marriage, Louie breaks tradition and invites her to his buck party. Only instead of debauchery and chaotic fun, the dinner turns into a devastating reveal of everything Louie and Irene have been hiding.

Dylan (Ben Hunter), Charlie (Jack Bannister), Sam (Harley Wilson), and Murph (Alfie Gledhill) make up the boys of the group, while Grace (Clementine Anderson), Charlie’s wife, is one of the only other women in the film (not counting the hedonistic Caroline McQuade’s Lady Lazarus, of course). The group dynamics are as central to the story as Louie and Irene’s relationship. While Azeez’s portrayal of Irene is showstopping, the men around her make it greater even. Because their silence and denial make her distant gaze and quiet dissociation have a greater weight.

As much as Birdeater is a confrontation of intimate partner violence, it’s more of a skewering of the complicit nature that male friends play in the cycle. Boys will be boys pervade society, and it’s what directing duo Clark And Weir directly confront. This is a story about violence that men can only tell. It’s thoughtful, provocative, and a narrative that turns inward. What do friends allow friends to do? What do they ignore? That’s what Clark and Weir are concerned with, and it’s what makes Birdeater stand out.

Birdeater’s shocking finale leaves everything open to interpretation. Jack Clark and Jim Weir task the audience to decide on the story’s end. Choose between Irene and Louie. A perfect victim narrative doesn’t weigh this film down. Irene has her own feral demons, but as the audience, you get to decide if that matters. By putting the final development at the feet of the viewer, Clark and Weir make Birdeater a part of the buck party and a part of the people who get to choose who to believe.

Birdeater screened as a part of the 2024 SXSW Film & Television Festival.