Birdeater: Australia’s latest addition to its blossoming horror genre

Australian independent film Birdeater offers an uncomfortable horror-thriller featuring a group of friends on a bucks weekend who each hold dark secrets.

Ben Hunter in the Australian thriller Birdeater.

The independent Australian thriller Birdeater opens with a young couple in their Sydney apartment talking about their looming wedding. However there’s an immediate feeling that something is not right between Irene (Shabana Azeez) and Louie (Mackenzie Fearnley).

They do not look like two young lovers. Louie regularly brings Irene a glass of water and a pill. He has a large scar on his head, a semicircle that traces a bright red line around his ear.

When a bird flies into the apartment, Louie catches it. A cut to outside shows chicks in the nest, crying for food. As he holds the bird in his hands the question is whether he will set it free or crush it. The titular birdeater is a huge tarantula that has a reputation it does not deserve.

The set-up for what follows comes when Louie invites his fiancee to his weekend bucks party at a creek-side location out of town.

“When I told the boys you were coming they got so excited,’’ he tells her. When he visits one of the boys soon afterwards, there’s a poster of the 1971 film Wake in Fright on the wall.

This movie has some similarities with that Australian masterpiece based on the 1961 novel by Kenneth Cook, including a coin spin game around a camp fire that doesn’t go as the participants hope.

The boys include Dylan (Ben Hunter), a roguish sort who plans to drink and take drugs, the quiet and calm Murph (Alfie Gledhill) and Charlie (Jack Bannister), who brings his girlfriend Grace (Clementine Anderson).

Charlie and Grace are Christians. After the main group arrives another boy, Sam (Harley Wilson), turns up, and it seems he had some sort of relationship with Irene in the past. Everyone, it emerges, has secrets, particularly Irene.

This young ensemble cast is impressive, especially Bannister as Charlie, who looks like he walked off the set of the 2005 movie Wolf Creek. Yet, as with all the characters, as with the birdeater spider, he is more – and less – than his external appearance suggests.

This edgy movie is directed by young Sydney filmmakers Jim Weir and Jack Clark, who also wrote the script. It was a hit at the 2023 Sydney Film Festival, winning the audience award for best Australian narrative feature.

It’s a strong addition to a recent wave of independent Australian horror-thrillers, following the critical and commercial success of Talk to Me, written and directed by Adelaide-based twins Danny and Michael Philippou.