The Devilishly Good ‘Birdeater’ Pecks Toxic Masculinity to Death
As a man, I’m going to come out and say that I’m tired of exploring the concept of toxic masculinity in horror and thriller movies. Before the pitchforks pierce my spleen, let me step back from that with a brief caveat: It’s not that the perils of machismo aren’t real, and aren’t an ever-present threat in everyday life. I agree with that wholeheartedly. My complaint stems from filmmakers trying to dissect the minutiae of masculinity’s effects and having no unique vision or concise message to convey.
Alex Garland and Ari Aster—listen up, boys. It’s no longer enough to use ostentatious visual style and needlessly shocking gore and violence to communicate the dangers of unrestrained male virility. While Garland’s Men and Aster’s Midsommar (and, arguably, elements of Beau is Afraid) were admirable efforts to anatomize masculinity, the directors ultimately blundered their theses by getting lost in the trappings of what audiences were expecting from them, based on their prior films. Viewers anticipated disturbing images, shocking scares, and menacing characters, and they got them at the expense of any truly original narrative.
Jack Clark and Jim Weir, who co-directed the Australian thriller Birdeater—which had its North American premiere at the SXSW festival March 9—are unencumbered by the problems that Aster and Garland fell prey to. For starters, Birdeater is the pair’s feature film debut; the audience has yet to develop preconceived notions over what the movie might feel like. But regardless of its directors’ prior credits, Birdeater blows Men, Midsommar, and any other recent examination of masculinity out of the water. Weir and Clark have crafted an absurdly stylish film that is never content to rest on its ambitious visual scope, burrowing under your skin for an eerie glimpse at how men in their youth form bonds with one another that can slowly spin out of control as time passes.