It's often labeled this way, but is Birdemic: Shock And Terror really the worst horror movie of all time? There's an old saying that nobody sets out to make a bad movie, and it takes the same amount of effort to produce a terrible film as it does a great one. It's entirely possible for a big budget movie with a great cast, director and script to still result in a disappointing movie, though on the flipside, it's difficult to make a good movie out of a bad screenplay, regardless of the talent.

Every few years, it feels like a new contender appears for the crown of the "worst movie ever." 2019's all-star musical Cats appeared doomed from the moment the trailer arrived and in addition to underperforming, it was met with roundly terrible reviews. The Room became a phenomenon precisely because its badness made it unintentionally hilarious, while star/director Tommy Wiseau made for a fascinating cult figure in his own right.

Related: Why The Cats Movie Is So Bad

That's just the tip of the iceberg, with Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever - Rotten Tomatoes "worst" movie - Battlefield Earth, Ishtar and many more earning critical scorn across the board. In 2010 a very unique candidate for "worst horror movie ever" arrived with Birdemic: Shock And Terror. This charted the stilted romance between a software salesman and his model girlfriend until birds start attacking and they have to band together to survive. Birdemic is an inept marvel, from the basic filmmaking to the terrible CGI birds used during attack sequences, but is it actually the worst horror film of the genre?

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Birdemic: Shock And Terror was written, directed and self-financed by James Nguyen, a software salesman. Nguyen is a huge fan of Alfred Hitchcock, with the movie unsurprisingly taking many cues from 1963's The Birds (but obviously not its forgotten sequel The Birds 2: Land's End). Just like The Room, the sheer uniqueness of his film is what made Birdemic become an unlikely cult favorite, and he later returned - with much of the same cast - to make 2013's Birdemic 2: The Resurrection. While the movie is undeniably bad, it still has too much entertainment value to be considered the genre's worst.

Birdemic: Shock And Terror was at least made with sincerity and passion, despite its many, MANY flaws. That's why it became such a cult favorite; the sequel, on the other hand, received arguably worse reviews because it was made in a more tongue-in-cheek fashion. There's still entertainment value in Nguyen's "romantic thriller" epic, whereas bigger budget horror fare like 2018's Slender Man, 2006's infamous One Missed Call remake or Halloween: Resurrection both fail as horror movies and are nearly torturous to sit through.

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