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Each relationship has its struggles—the secrets it keeps and the challenges that it has to overcome to continue. Some of those challenges are bigger—and the secrets darker—than others. And in the Australian thriller Birdeater, one couple’s secrets and challenges all come out on a weekend with friends.
Birdeater sets out on a wild weekend in the wilderness with a group of old friends. As her wedding day approaches, bride-to-be Irene (Shabana Azeez) struggles with the stress and pressure of planning the big day—so her fiancé, Louie (Mackenzie Fearnley), invites her to join him for the bachelor party weekend. When the guests arrive at their cabin in the outback, the party kicks off like any other bachelor party—with plenty of drunken adventures. But when secrets about the couple’s relationship are revealed, the weekend takes a dark turn.
Early glimpses into the couple’s life together definitely raise some red flags. From the beginning of the film, it’s clear that something isn’t quite right between Louie and Irene—but it takes a while for the whole disturbing truth to come out. And, in the meantime, the film offers a big, boisterous (and, admittedly, often rather obnoxious) distraction in the form of the groom’s closest friends.
The weekend brings together a bunch of different personalities—the kind you’d find in any group of guy friends, from the quiet rule-follower to the outspoken rule-breaker and everything in between. And what initially plays out is exactly what you’d expect from a bachelor party weekend: a lot of drinking, plenty of bad decisions, and some drunken trash talk around the fire. But that trash talk leads to something more, causing conflicts to arise between friends and partners.
What starts out as a rather slow burn builds to something altogether frantic as friends and couples face off in the outback, fighting for understanding or the upper hand or just plain control of their relationships. It definitely has some fascinating moments as it explores the dynamics of these different friendships and partnerships—but the storytelling often gets lost in choppy cuts and strange side trips and the men’s over-the-top bachelor weekend revelry.
Birdeater takes a look at the ever-changing relationships of a group of friends. But while there are so many interesting parts to the story, these more thoughtful parts are too often overpowered by the noise and chaos of the bachelor party antics.
You can join these friends for a weekend in the outback when Birdeater arrives in select theaters on January 10, 2025.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
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