Worst Movie Ever

For you out there that truly enjoy the torture of an awful film:

Worst film I've ever seen is

Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010)

Written and directed by James Nguyen
If you think you've seen a more horrible film, please tell me what it is, cause as of right now I don't think there is anything worse. I don't know what the filmmakers were thinking, or even if they were thinking, but this is garbage.

So this movie is about killer birds. And the reason they kill? Global warming. And then at the end, they fly away.

This movie is so bad, and for more reasons than just the story. The acting is maybe elementary school Thanksgiving play quality. The special effects are worse than that. And the audio is even worse.

Anyway, not gonna talk much more about it cause it'll just get me worked up. So if you're curious to know more, check out the trailer. PS if you're a glutton for this anguish, there is a sequel.

Banshee Chapter (2013)

Banshee Chapter (2013)
Directed by Blair Erickson
Written by Blair Erickson and Daniel J. Healy

Image from http://www.movieinsider.com/m9385/the-banshee-chapter/

Banshee Chapter is a film about a young female journalist looking for her missing best friend who has got himself caught up in a horrific CIA experiment.

After college, best friends Anne and James sadly drifted apart. Anne went on her journey to become a journalist, while James began research on a book about MKUltra. He had received a sample of the drug from his friends in Colorado, and decided to partake in it on tape. Another friend of James' recorded his trip. Unfortunately James wasn't hallucinating what was happening to him. After ingesting the drug, the radio tuned into a strange station playing was sounded like ice cream truck music overlaid with a young girl talking gibberish. Then a silhouette appeared in the window and something happened...
When James' friend comes around he notices James is missing. He runs about the property frantically looking for his friend and eventually finds him out back. But it's not really James. A look-alike with dark eyes and some red liquid escaping its mouth confronts the friend. Next thing the friend knows he's being pinned for James' disappearance, but shortly after his interrogation he disappears himself.
Anne see's this as an opportunity for an amazing story and to find James. Her first research is reviewing the friend's tape. She then tracks down a man who may be able to identify what that weird radio broadcast is. An older gentleman at an electronic repair shop says yes, he has heard this before. And Anne's best bet of hearing it again is out at a particular lonely stretch of highway late at night. But when she goes there and hears what she's been searching for, something beyond the comfort of her car prompts her to make a quick getaway.
At the officer her boss, Olivia, has another tape for Anne. It's a tape from the MKUltra experiments showing living subjects being injected with liquid extracted from the brain of a dead patient. The tape then goes blank for the last half. It is sent away to see of what was originally recorded in that black space can be extracted, and in the mean time Anne sets out to find author Thomas Blackburn.
She got the tip to see Blackburn after she told a coworker James had got the drug from his 'friends in Colorado', and a coworker remarked "Like the book title?"
The book Friends in Colorado is then presented to Anne. It is written by Thomas Blackburn so Anne believes he is actually the one who supplied James with the substance.
Blackburn, not talking with journalists anymore, is greeted in a bar by Anne, under the alias of Sarah, a big Blackburn fan. Blackburn invites her back to his place, where she meets Callie. Callie is mixing up some MKUltra for them to enjoy, and Blackburn gives some to Sarah in a shot glass, before going to his liquor cabinet to get them another drink. While his back is turned Sarah chucks the MKUltra, then gladly takes the new drink from Blackburn. Slyly he confronts her about her true identity saying he knew it from the get-go. And that he actually put the drug in her drink, not in the shot she threw away...
Angered, Anne retreats to the bedroom upstairs where Callie is sitting. Callie is looking wide-eyes out the window claiming something is coming for them, something is close, something can see her and she doesn't like it. Weirded out Anne goes back downstairs to hear that ice cream truck recording and something banging on the door to get in. Blackburn, Callie and Anne hole up in the bedroom while the thing tries to break through the bedroom door. The place goes dark and the door opens. Blackburn and Anne are knocked out, and when they come to Callie is gone. The two of them get the hell out of there.
When they stop to regain composure the radio tunes into that noise again, and Blackburn starts to convulse. His eyes roll back and his orifices bleed. Anne guns it out of their until they're out of reach of the signa;.
With their nerves returning Anne insists they go to Callie's house to make sure she's ok. Perhaps they all just hallucinated all of this.
Blackburn directs her to the house she had been squatting in. He waits in the car, still a mess from the earlier incident, but gives Anne a walkie talkie to stay in touch.
As Anne approaches the front door of the house, it looks like someone's been here... She heads to the basement where Blackburn says she makes her concoctions, and he finds formulas for the MKUltra, as well as security camera feeds from around Callie's house. She sees Callie's form enter between the time at Blackburn's and now. Then the figure goes to the basement, and walks into a shadowed corner just minutes before Anne arrives. And she never sees her leave... Paranoid, Anne approaches the stairs by the corner slowly, having grabbed what papers she could. Halfway up the stairs a hand grabs her, and in a panic Anne flees back to the car. The the two drive.
Blackburn explains that the MKUltra drug isn't really for a regular trip. He theorizes it's a chemical catalyst that makes your mind a receiver for something. And that something hones into your location once you've ingested the drug. Your can tell it's near from the radio, and when it gets you, you're gone, but your body remains. It wears you.
Fearing for them, Anne points out to where she thinks it all originated from based on the papers from Callie's house, and suggests they burn it to hell. Blackburn tells her she doesn't have to. She can just walk away. Because he didn't actually give her the drug.
He had lied to her like she lied to him. But this doesn't make Anne feel safer, because James' friend went missing too. They finally resolve to go the origin and destroy it.
They arrive at what looks like a bunker with a broadcast antenna on top. Inside the rooms that were in the experiment tape are all around them. Finally they find one room with a tank and some sort of giant computer hooked up to it that's still running. The tank has one window. Anne crouches to peer inside and pale face presses against it. Then the radio signal begins. Blackburn begins to fit, and before he is taken by the signal, he shoots himself. Anne flees down the hall in fright, to be confronted by a strange humanoid figure. Wearing James' clothes.
She runs back to the room, locks the door and douses the place in gasoline from the car. The thing is coming for her at the door but she manages to set the gas alight before she's taken too.
Soon afterwards Anne finds herself at a police station. It looks similar to the one James' friend was held at for interrogation at the beginning. Her boss arrives and is glad she's safe, but advises against her story. They'll call her crazy. But Anne doesn't know what else to say. Olivia mentions to her that the company was able to extract the buried footage on the tape, but says the content isn't important right now. She wants to know is Anne is sure she didn't have any of the drug. She says yes, but then the intercom starts plating the ominous ice cream truck music again. Frantically Anne screams for the police to let her out of the investigation room, and when she turns around she finds Olivia at her neck, black eyes and bleeding from the mouth like James from the tape.

Image from http://www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-latest/the-banshee-chapter/5059526.article

So this movie really freaked me out. Yes is is low budget, but the film handled that well. It felt like the crew said "We only have this much money and time, so let's make a top notch film on a tiny budget by really focusing the money where is needs to go."
Within the first ten minutes I jumped around twice. I don't usually get phased by horror movies, but this one did it.
I don't understand why ratings aren't higher for this film on IMDB. I'd recommend to a horror fan who also likes to think a little. To top it off, it's one of those films based on other stories, like how Devil's Pass is based on the real hikers who went missing in the same area so long ago.
I didn't know this going in, but the MKUltra experiments were a real thing and may very well still be. Like it says in the movie, the experiments were intended to figure out a recipe for mind control. Tons of people, an unknown number, were used as test subjects without knowing. Perhaps it's still happening now too. I'm not a huge conspiracy theorist, but we've seen what the US government does to it's own citizens and the rest of the world with or without their knowing and/or approval, so I really unfortunately don't see this film as far fetched.
It is disheartening to know there are people within high ranks of the government that can literally go whatever kind of experiments they want on knowing or unknowing test subjects and get away with whatever the consequences to the subjects are. And that taxes go to fund things like this...
We can hope this isn't continuing in the USA, but...
Anyway, good thinking film. I'd also like to add I've only watched through this once so far, but the interrogation room from the beginning with James' friend and the one from the end with Anne looked similar to me. This prompts me to believe that the police knew on some level what was going on, and perhaps they were being controlled themselves by some successful version of MKUltra, so they purposefully stuck Anne in a room with a receiver in order to take care of their problem.
Also worthy of note, this isn't a typically blockbuster with love stories and such going on. Yes, Anne considers the possibility that maybe her and James should have been something. But they don't live happily ever after. There's no sex, or nudity to keep attention. Just a good story without those stupid movie crutches.
And finally, the end of the credits don't play some catch pop song. Instead the last thing you hear is the broadcast. And it is eerie...

you don't know me

you don't know me (2008)
Directed by Sean Melia


Awesome short film. I love how clean and concise it is.

Watch it here.

Image from SeanMelia.com

So Michael, an old college friend is having a party and Neil and his girlfriend Stefanie come over. Neil is trying to become YouTube famous so he's devised a plane to get more views than ever. He plants some Flip cameras around his friend's house, and waits for the party to end.

When it's over and everyone else is gone, Neil goes to get his friend. He tells Michael that there's been... an accident. In Michael's room where Neil and Stefanie went to screw, like Stefanie. She's dead, Neil claims. Calmly Michael goes back downstairs and gets a beer for Neil. Then they talk about how they'll get rid of the body.

Michael gets a saw, a knife, garbage bags, and suitcases. He plans to drain Stefanie, cut her up, and roll her out of the place. Has Michael done this before? They go back to the bedroom. "Neil, what's going on?" Stefanie, alive, asks Neil in a panic. "Stefanie, run!"

A simple plan to scare Michael nuts and get it on camera has revealed that he's not who they thought at all.

Michael goes after Niel first, closing Stefanie into the bedroom. Soon he returns to the door.

"Is this part of the movie?"
"Yes! Yes, this is part of the movie," Michael answers.
Stefanie huddles with the sheets, and a motor of some kind is heard beyond the door...

~~~

Incredibly low budget, but this simple story doesn't call for a huge one anyway. I enjoyed it. I though Michael's (played by Michael Hogan) acting was good. I would have like a crisper picture, cleaner sound, and a little better lighting, but they're not bad in a way that distracts. It's a great short that could be greater with these changes is all. I think this is an inspiration to young filmmakers who are trying to do it all on their own and do it well. You don't have to have amazing cameras or special effects. At the core, it's about a well-said story. A horror movie that didn't show any violence, but got it's fear factor from the implications.

I don't know much about the director, Sean Melia. The IMDB page is pretty barren and there hasn't been any recent talk about him online that I've found. I hope to see his name more though. He seems to be pretty to-the-point in his art, as evident by no superfluous junk in this short, as well as his web site.

Image from http://www.openfilm.com/reviews/videos/meliasean-you-dont-know-me

So yes, very good, very good. Would recommend.

Entity

Entity (2012)
Directed by Steve Stone


A good movie to watch alone at night. Only really 2/5 though. This film has a good amount of potential, but at the end when the film has built up to possibly be something really cool it goes the other way and just sort of flatlines. Just sort of ends.

Image from www.entitythemovie.com


A tv show crew from Darkest Secrets goes to Russia when they hear about a bunch of unidentified bodies found in the woods. Russian Yuri tells them no information beyond the fact that there were unidentified bodies found was ever released from the government. The host, and two cameramen are lead by psychic Ruth. The locates the area in the woods where the bodies were found but senses a building through the woods where the people were brought from.

The group follows her and ends up at a building first claimed by Yuri to be for industrial use. Upon exploration they find that isn't true. Ruth wants to leave but host Kate pressures her to continue. It them becomes clear this was set up somewhat like a sanitarium.

When exploring a nearly barren room with only a bed, Ruth is attacked. She's disrupted something. When the group turns around they find crewmember David is missing. They set up a base camp in another room with Ruth rests and scrub through their camera footage for signs of David. It looks like he's just wandered off. Kate and cameraman Matt go to search for him.

While those two are gone it's revealed to Ruth that Yuri knows more about this place than he's be owning up to. After prying, Yuri admits he's here searching for someone -- a long lost love, Tasha. Tasha was a psychic and one day she just went missing. Yuri heard of psychics being captured and used for government and military experiments. He's sure this is where she was brought, and eventually killed like everyone else.

Yuri coaxes Ruth into helping with his gun. Meanwhile Kate and Matt find David, but only after something else has. In the darkness he's tossed around like a rag doll so the two flee back to base. Once there, Yuri forces them all to assist him in his search before he'll let them go. But once they begin searching, the entity finds them. A door separated Yuri from the group. He gets a glimpse of his Tasha, but is then claimed by something else.

Ruth then insists Matt and Kate escape while she tries to talk to the spirits, or at least buy them time. When almost out, Kate persuades Matt to go back with her for Ruth. They find her by the room where the thing was 'disturbed'. Then they retreat to their base to hold out till light. Unfortunately they don't make it. Matt goes to gather the cameras but something gets him. Kate goes to investigate what's taking him so long, only to find his body. Cornered she becomes pray as well.

When she awakens she's in that room again. She walks around to find her crew and Yuri. They say nothing, save for Ruth. In Russian she tells Kate that she'll never leave. She returns to her room, then disappears. Ruth, or whatever is in her body, walks away into the forest.

Image from www.entitythemovie.com

So the pacing is a little wonky. The movie is under 90 minutes and it takes about an hour for Yuri to reveal the real reason he told the TV show about the bodies. Acting is okay. I don't know that the characters were fully developed. Like why would Kat push Ruth to continue in the beginning but then go back for her in the end? If she had been jaded as a TV host from a lot of bogus leads in the past, then they should have explained that in the film. Out of the blue David becomes afraid of bears and wolves when they walk through the woods too. Totally felt from left field. Just bizarre stuff.

Colour correction for the film is a typical highly desaturated horror blue. There's little in terms of music, but that's because as a semi found-footage type film, all the ambient noises were important to hear. I do appreciate that this was a hybrid of found footage and regular third person omnipotent POV. It was nice to not have another poopy found footage film.

There's a lot of unanswered questions in the film, but not necessarily pot holes, meaning this film can leave you thinking. If you watch with a friend you'll be able to speculate a lot of stuff. Like is the reason the government didn't say anything else about the bodies because they knew where they were from and didn't want anyone else getting involved with the disgruntled spirits? Ect.

Worth a watch if you're bored at night. Otherwise, not that great.

Creepypasta Movies

 Silence=copy of Slender Man, yes?
Image from tumblr

I recently found out there's a Slender Man feature length movie! Called up a friend and was all like "Did you know there's a Slender Man movie?" And then I was all like "It would be awesome if there was a Rake mov---OMYGOSH THERE'S A RAKE MOVIE! Just found it on youtube!" And then I watched it, and I watched The Slender Man with my friend, and then I watched Windigo (a Slender Man movie).

The Slender Man was great. The Rake was good. Windigo sucked.

Windigo (2011)
Vince Emerson Media
Directed by James Hardiment

Oh my gosh, Windigo was bad! It was like no one had any sense of pacing.
So you got your group of students filming a documentary. Their topic is deforestation. They have two actors, a selfish impatient girl, and an oblivious idiot guy. The group is camping out on the property of the camera man's uncle, and the camera man's uncle is dirty creep by the way. The uncle is wearing the same shirt in the beginning and the end. I guess he could have done his laundry, but it's a weird choice in a movie. So the kids are trying to get interviews with locals on how deforestation has effected their professions. Most of the people either don't know what that means or like deforestation. So the kids bicker and fight amongst themselves, an Slender Man pops up here and there.

If a ninety minute movie takes seventy minutes to start, there's something wrong. Yes there are shots with Slender Man lurking the background here and there, but they're few an far between. Man it was just so bad. And yes we get there a large amount of time is going by. Yes a few days is going by. That doesn't mean you have to make the film a few days long! You edit to give a sense of time passing but cut things to keep the audience interested. Basically it could have had a shot at being good if it was compressed to maybe forty minutes.

The Rake (2011)
Enter Viral
Ken Collins

Which leads me to The Rake. I understand it was a zero budget film shot in two days. I'm not sure how long it took to edit. But basically in spite of lots of factor threatening to depreciate the ambitiousness of the film, it was well done! It was a group of dudes doing stupid boy stuff. Nothing in their actions was unbelievable either, so great job with that too! Boys do stupid things, like think they can survive in the wilderness with five bottles of water and probably no spring water filtration system. People do stupid stuff.
Three friends agree to go camping in the forest of a mountain for a month. Their goal is to be cut off from the outside and just be wilderness dudes for a while. Unfortunately after the first night one of the boys go missing. The two other wait for a while before deciding to look for him. They go towards what they believe are his screams but find nothing. Eventually another boy is stolen right out from the tent, and the one person remaining decides to make a run for it towards a road by an abandoned mine. But something gets him first.
Simple story. Not confusing. Easy to follow. It was under an hour and edited well enough to hold the audience. It had good pacing too. There are comments in youtube making criticisms here and there, but I didn't find any of them degrading to the film, if I even noticed them at all. If Windigo had edited like The Rake, it would not suck so bad. In my opinion the Rake creature was also really well done. I love how its cameos are sprinkled here and there and you could probably watch through it a few different times and see it at times you didn't notice before. Wendigo on the other hand made it pretty obvious when Slender Man was around. Yes, I understand electronics get messed up by his presence, but there wasn't much effort when hiding him in scenes.

The Slender Man (2013)
SirJohnProductions
Directed by AJ Meadows

The Slender Man was great. I was interested the whole almost eighty minutes. What was nice about that too was there were stories going on aside from merely Slender Man abducting people. The side stories all rooted from that, but there were compelling in their own way. I would equate it to how Game of Thrones has a million different stories, but eventually they all cross paths. Wendigo's side story of a bunch of kids making a documentary wasn't compelling at all. The characters were so winy you couldn't even feel bad when something happened to them! Plus their side story was about little kids making a documentary on deforestation. It's not like that's a horrible topic but they literally got no where with it except for explaining the definition of the word. All the characters were too busy wining and complaining to get anywhere else.

In spite of this mixed bag of feelings towards these movies, I honestly do love that there are so many. I love that these are stories that normal people (meaning not necesarily film students and pros) are driven to tell. I love that.
Just to throw this in, there's a theatrical slender Man movie coming out this summer. Entity. A few mixed feelings just towards the fact that this is going to be in select theatres based on demand, while pretty much everything else is free to watch on youtube, but oh well. I also don't like how Entity's t-shirt implies Slender Man is the devil, unless this movie actually is about Satan, who is for some reason faceless, extremely tall, and in a suite. But that would be really stupid. Anyway, trailer for Entity below:

Entity (2013)
East Bay Entertainment

The Slender Man (2013)
Scream1210 Productions
Directed by Michael Davis

Continuing, there is another movie titled The Slender Man on Scream1210's Youtube channel, which is pretty bad. It centers around a film student trying to unravel the mystery of a town's many missing persons reports. These reports have only became popular after a mother and her baby go missing. This 'film student' sucks at filming! Learn how to hold a camera! There are these amazing things called tripods and camera stabilizers. I don't always get the best shots when I'm shooting, but my footage is still way better than his. And shooting with a consumer camera? That's totally fine. Not everyone can afford amazing prosumer cameras, and you can still get great shots. But not checking sound levels? Oh my gosh, it's bad. The omnipotent third person camera man shots are tolerable (barely), but not the ones the protagonist shoots himself. It's just a bad film.
The film, beyond just the character's bad filming, is bad. The audio levels are inconsistent. And it sounds like lots of the tracks are made with Garage Band. I mean it's acceptable to make music with that program, but this film used just a lot of the ambient sound instruments. The thing with making films with your homies is that every other amateur is probably using similar if not THE SAME tools as you, so you need to try your best to make your use of the tools different. Don't download the most popular free sound effect if there's a lesser known one of the same quality. Don't distract your audience with poor choices on the back end. It's not the greatest when your audience can go 'Aha. I recognize that sound!' It pulls them out of your story.
Anyway, as far as the story goes, the student gets marked by Slender Man to die in five days. And he does. The end.

Below Zero

Below Zero (2011)
Directed by Justin Thomas Ostensen

Furlong (Jack) sitting at laptop getting upset by the typewriter sounds he's hearing.

About a writer, Jack (Edward Furlong), who gets locked in a walk-in meat freezer in the boonies at the orders of his agent. He's supposed to be locked up for 5 days to help him get out of his writer's block funk. He sort of describes his writing methods as method writing (a play on the term method acting) so his involvement in his story of course leads his imagination of absorb him completely in some Inception-type action. He's in this disabled meat locker at a chicken-killing house, complete with meat grinder, meat hooks, and electric bath. Great fuel for a story right? So he type, but then his laptop is mysteriously replaced with a typewriter in his sleep. His ideas he writes and the film gets lived out in his vivid imagination. He writes himself in and kind of breaks the fourth wall doing so. I know this is a pretty weak description but it's a film about a writer writing a film, who gets sucked into his idea about a writer sucked into a writer writer a film so it's wiggly. As a character Jack goes between being him and a Frank, the enigmatic missing husband of the woman's chicken slaughter house he's staying at.

Anyway, the woman whose property he's being locked up at and her son come back (whether it's been 5 days or a night isn't clear) for Jack. In Jack's mind a million crazy things have happened in the time he's been in his room. But the main one being he's decided not to write. Instead Jack the Hack takes the girl's manuscript, which she left with him to try to get some feedback, planning to claim it as his own. When the girl comes in to give him coffee he steps out and closes her in the freezer, takes her son, and leaves her for dead.

This film got my interest because Edward Furlong stars in it. I like that he is a great actor that dabbles in drama and b-movies. I enjoyed him in American History X and Arachnoquake XD
In spite of my superficial reasoning, I was pleased with the film. It's got pretty bad ratings on IMDB, but it wasn't as bad as IMDB claims. It was definitely... different.

The editing is kind of second rate for the firs third of the film. There's a lot of little inconsistencies between camera angles and you notice em with some scenes cutting from one angle to the other. I really also hate that Jack's friend is eating when he get's the message from Jack that says he's in trouble. The friend calls the number back and mentions how his friend called and he's fracking eating?! What kind of friend is that? His homie has been missing for hours and he's just eating. Then the friend somehow finds the place with the phone number and ends up dying for Jack. Weird relationship... 'I'll die for you but I gotta finish this slice first.'

However Michael Berryman and Edward Furlong are in it so I forgive. Berryman is an amazing actor who has been in a good chunk of anything you've seen—The Lords of Salem, The Devil's Rejects, The Crow (2005), Spy Hard, The Crow, Tales from the Crypt, Star Trek IV and V, and tons more. He's got an amazing face. It's crazy awesomely distinct and riddled with amazing wrinkles and creases. The tight shots on him in the movie looked great.

Just look at those amazing features! On screen is where Berryman belongs. Thank you, Mr. Berryman, for being so awesome!

Zambezia

Zambezia (2012)
Directed by Wayne Thornley

I mentioned in a prior post other animations popping up from studios other than the usual suspects (Disney and DreamWorks). This is one of them--Triggerfish Animation Studios. And the movie is great!

Image from www.zambeziamovie.com

Cabin fever is killing curious young falcon, Tai, but his father, Tendai wants the two of them to just stick to the area they currently reside in. Unfortunately for Tendai, a stork Gogo, her friend Tini and some eggs stop in breaking the monotony. Their sudden appearance makes Tai want to explore even more. The newcomers say they're going to an island called Zambezia, a safe heaven for all birds except for marabou. Weird thing is though Tai has never seen them before they seem to know Tendai.
When they leave, Tai decides to follow them, apologizing to his father but saying he has to do this. Tendai later decides to go after his son but overhears some marabou talking to Budzo, a large leguaan who eats eggs. They're teaming up and planning a coup d'etat over Zambezia! Unfortunately before Tendai can fly away to warn the citizens he's captured.
Meanwhile in Zambezia Tai is eager to join the Hurricanes, an elite group of flyers that patrols the city, offers citizens help, and keeps the area safe. He makes the cut to be a trainee and makes some new friends, Ezee and Zoe.
Zoe's father Sekhuru is informed of Tai's arrival in the city and asks Gogo if Tendai will be coming. Doesn't look like it.
On the day of Zambezia's Spring Celebration all the weaver birds are kidnapped by Marabou! Tai and the Hurricanes go after them. Thinking he can catch up with them, Tai breaks formation, but to no avail. Not being able to work with the team gets Tai in trouble. Then things get worse. Tai decides he'll go look around himself for the missing weavers. That night Ezee, Zoe and Tai sneak out even though Tai is grounded. They end up overhearing an evil plot between the marabou and Budzo about forcing the weavers to build a bridge across the water to Zambezia. The marabou will no longer be excluded and no one will be able to stop Budzo. It's a horribly evil team! Unfortunately Ezee gets hurt so Zoe flies back for help. This gets them in big trouble, and Tai is kicked off the Hurricanes.
Shortly afterwards a few more Maribou stop by. The Huriccanes leave in pursuit, however it's a trap!
They're caught in a net.
Meanwhile Tai is sulking and thinking of going back to his father's. Gogo is angry at hearing this and forces him to see Sekhuru. Gogo insists it's time for Tai to know the truth of his past, and his mother. Sekhuru agrees.
Long ago Tai's mother and father founded the Hurricanes to protect Zambezia. Zambezia came first. They were attacked by Budzo, who was stealing eggs. Sukhuru, Tendai, and Tai's mother gave it there all but were only able to save one egg. That eggs grew up to be Zoe. Sekhuru lost a wing, Budzo a toe, and Tai's mother lost her life. Tendai was overwhelmed by grief and left with baby Tai to find a new place to live. He wanted to live in a place where the strong didn't have to stick their necks out for the weak. He didn't want to have to suffer all these pains for what to him seemed like nothing. He wanted to be far from the island.
Inspired by the story, Tai insists they go search for Budzo's trail from the other night. Zoe, Tai and Gogo leave on their mission.  Tai and Gogo don't find Budzo, but they find the weavers and Tendai, caged. They break them out and hear that the marabou and Budzo left long ago to put the plan in motion. With everyone free they head back to Zambezia. When they arrive it's too late! The marabou have just put down the woven bridge and Budzo begins to cross. When Budzo meets on the bridge with marabou leader Cecil he explains it's not just a coup d'etat for Zambezia, but he's double crossing the marabou too! Leguanns all over are rushing for the bridge.
With the Huriccanes still gone, Tendai and Tai take it upon themselves to do what they can. Tai convinces the marabou to side with them against the leguaans since they now have a common enemy.
Still searching, Zoe hears distant cries. It's the Huriccanes calling from help from the net! She finds them and frees them, then they rush back home.
On the island the birds are panicking. Budzo is heading for the eggs! Tai tries to raise morale and encourage everyone to do what they can to help keep their home safe. The Hurricanes return and the battle is heated. Birds are chucking watermelon at the bridge trying to stop the other leguaans, and Cecil is frantically trying to chew through the bridge. Eventually he makes it, and the only problem left is Budzo. The whole community is giving it their all. The Hurricanes have brought back the net they were on and use it on Budzo. Everyone is pulling the net or pushing the structure Budzo is on, trying to make him fall off the island. Finally he gives, and tumbles down. But Zoe's foot is caught in the net! As she falls with him, Tai dives to save her. They get dangerously close to the water, beyond the point any other bird is able to pull up in time. Tendai and Sukhuru fear they've lost their children, when Ezee's amazing eyesight spots them in the mists rising up. They return victorious.
Zambezia now welcome the marabou as part of their paradise, and the Hurricanes induct many new recruits, including Morton, distant cousin of Cecil who after year of vying for Cecil's love and attention finally gets it. Every bird is safe and happy.

Image from www.zambeziamovie.com

Nice amount of detailing. Even in dessert scenes, the animation doesn't seem spartan and cheap because of little details, like the sun passing through feathers. So nice! Not as crazy detailed as Legend of the Guardians, but pretty nice.

I also personally love all the difference accents going on. It's really fun. The audio, dialogue, foley, and music is wonderful.

This South African film stars the voice talents of stars from all over, including Leonard Nimoy! Crazy, right? If you're not strictly on a live-action diet, this film is soooo so worth a watch. It's littered with awesome live-action celebs that are actually doing quiet well with voice acting.

Mr. Nimoy and his character Sekhuru. Images from IMDB and https://www.facebook.com/zambeziamovie

Here's something else crazy, this amazing film is this animation studio's first work! Triggerfish Animation Studios has done commercials in the past, but with the success of their first movie, hopefully it'll be feature lengths from here on out. Zambezia had been in the works for six years, and it turned out great. Their next film, Khumba, is set to release this year. This having been their first feature film doesn't make Triggerfish a threat to the big dogs, but I enjoyed this film so much I'll gladly watch the next one, and I wouldn't be surprised if their studio became a new household name in the US.

There's been a handful of entertaining bird themed animations over the last several years--Surf's Up, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga-Hoole, Happy Feet and more. If you enjoyed any of those films, this one won't dissappoint.