After a surprisingly high number of positive reviews, I sat down to watch Dead Birds expecting a masterpiece and was surprised to discover that it was the most boring film I had seen in ages.
Don’t get me wrong, the film looks absoloutely beautiful, and the filmmakers really made use of the beautiful Southern setting and creepy plantation house, but aesthetics and solid cast aside, the film’s story was weak.
The film centres on a band of bank robbers who seek shelter in an old plantation house before succumbing to all manner of creepy and weird goings on.
The film’s opening was quite shocking and graphic, and I must applaud their brave decision to kill a child, as it is definitely a rare occurence in cinema today, and especially in such a graphic manner. It is not however gratuitous, it is used to convey how relentless and greedy these people are, but it also allows the lead to show a little remorse in the hopes that the audience will be sympathetic towards him.
The cast, some of which are familiar to genre fans are all very capable and do a good job but they don’t have much to work with. I agree that the filmmakers were brave for deciding not to make this contemporary, and the cast and locations make it easy on the eye, but it’s essentially a bunch of people walking around a house and it’s grounds spooked out, hallucinating, dreaming and witnessing manifestations.
The ending may confuse some people, but it isn’t that hard to get if you pay attention throughout. I got the idea they were going for, but the fact of the matter is the story was slow and dull so I didn’t really care.
OVERALL SUMMARY
A well made and acted film with a fine cast is nice to look at, but doesn’t have much going on upstairs…..cue blonde jokes.
