BIRDER

(director: Nate Dushku; screenwriter: Amnon Lourie; cinematographer: Robert M. Edgecomb; editor: Ian Holden; music: Culley Johnson; cast: Miles Crawford (David Sachs), Jes Davis (Sam Delaney), David J. Cork (Mathew Foster), Michael Emery (Kristian Brooks), Uki Pavlovic (Corban Delany), Cody Sloan (Patrick Pierce), Delilah DuBois (Delilah D’Angelo); Runtime: 87; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Nate Dushku, Bobby Applebaum, Amnon Lourie; Murgen Croaker Productions; 2023)

“Pulls no punches by showing both graphic gay sex and grisly murder scenes.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Nate Dushku directs his first feature film that’s written by Amnon Lourier. It’s an LGBTQ+ erotic slasher thriller, that pulls no punches by showing both graphic gay sex and grisly murder scenes.


Kristian Brooks (Michael Emery) is a dangerous loner, who refers to himself as a birder (which I took to mean he’s a bird watcher) from Vermont. He makes his way just before Labor Day to a beautiful woodland nudist camp for queers in New England, where he’s a stranger but easily is accepted by the regulars as just a drifter looking for a queer sexual encounter.

But just because he’s queer in a queer setting doesn’t mean he can’t be a serial killer who takes pleasure in both fucking his gay partners and in killing them.

It’s not a film for those who can’t stomach the violence, but at least the viewer gets to see the psychopath get what he deserves in the end in this well-produced low-budget film that shocks us more than it’s insightful.


Delilah DuBois plays the friendly park ranger, who patrols the grounds and is open-minded about what she sees.
 
It played at the Melbourne Queer Film Festival.

REVIEWED ON 12/7/2023  GRADE: B