Spencer Very highly underrated by the few people who saw it, unheard of to the rest of the world...While I think this was, in fact, a pretty good movie, I think the reason it's underrated is partially because it doesn't scare the hell out of you at any point, as some people may have expected. I think this was intended to simply be creepy, not a screamer. A lot of time is (effectively) spent on developing the atmosphere, but on top of this, there are a few very strange happenings to keep you watching and interested. The pace is slow, but it should be. I just think that all of the people who don't like this movie should give it a second chance.

morrison-dylan-fan With having kept an eye out for Horror Western titles since viewing the excellent Spaghetti Horror Western God Said To Cain,I was caught by surprise,when a fellow IMDber sent me a Horror Western film,which led to me looking up to the sky to see the deadly birds of prey.The plot:Alabama:1863-After successfully robbing a bank,a group of outlaws start travelling to their safe house .Whilst heading to the location,the outlaws kill a strange demonic-looking creature,which suddenly rushes out of a corn field.Reaching the safe house,the outlaws get set to put their feet up for the night,and head off with their winnings in the morning.As night starts to set in,the outlaws begin to fear that there are about to lose all their winnings to an unknown force.View on the film:Attempting to combine the Horror and Western genres,the screenplay by Simon Barrett initially strikes a fine balance of crossing a mysterious Horror atmosphere,with tough,gritty Western gunshots.Casting moments across the film which appear to be aiming for a huge payoff, (such as the killing of a child)Barrett struggles to keep a grip on the elements,with the horror side of things sliding from an ill-defined curse,to demonic monsters which people can walk past normally without a care in the world one moment,and then get completely terrified by the next.Along with the flawed horror delivery, Barrett fails to expand on each outlaws initial reaction to the robbery,which leads to each of the outlaws lacking distinctive features,and largely being interchangeable.Transforming an old plantation house (which was not a set,but an actual location) into an old dark house,director Alex Turner (not the lead singer of The Arctic Monkeys!) wraps the location in pelts of rain and a deadly cloak of darkness.Sadly Turner burns out the movies sense of an unknown evil,by openly showing the demonic creature,in broad daylight within the first 5 minutes of the title.Along with giving away the identity of the mysterious evil far too early,Turner also uses Peter Lopez score repeatedly to cover up a real lack of tension-building,as Turner turns the scores sound level from quiet to deafeningly loud to wrap around everything from a poorly-designed ritual killing, (which can't decide if it's a killing or the rising of a demon) to darken corridors whose shadows contain very little fear for viewers of these dead birds.

oneguyrambling This has such a basic plot that I'll knock it off straight away so I can spend more time on why this sucks.After some rogue soldiers from the 1800s (1863 so we're told), rob and slaughter some Southern soldiers depositing some cizzash in the local bank. This is the best scene in the movie, although unfortunately it really has next to nothing to do with the rest of the film and takes only 5 minutes. It is quite violent and has a couple of good gory effects.The best part of the 1800s? Crazy facial hair, it seems most of the extras in the town were chosen based upon the length and complexity of their face fuzz, after this scene though none of the primary characters rock much more than carefully trimmed stubble.Right, so the bad guys, 5 guys and one babe go on the run to Mexico, only night falls and they decide to stop off at an abandoned house on the edge of a cornfield. As they are coming to the edge of the cornfield something happens that I still don't really get, they are rushed by a… thing, and one of the guys uses lightning reflexes to blow it away.(Best as I can explain it looks like a smaller version of the Alien : Ripley baby from Alien Resurrection.) The rest of the movie is set over the ensuing night in the old house, and it is so horror cliché that I won't bother explaining it.After this finished I thought that it was an 1800s poor man's version of Event Horizon, a crew are trapped in a confined space, and the scariness that ensues sorta makes them turn on each other.Now a couple days later I think it is more like an alternate version of The Descent, where the first half is an unsettling caving trip gone wrong, but the second half is almost totally different, like a monster movie. Only the first half of Dead Birds is ordinary and the second half totally blows.When you finally learn what the hell just happened it does make sense in a nonsensical way, but you won't care because it is so poorly executed.I thought everything and everyone looked a little too clean in the opening town scene, you know, a clean neck and some strategic streaks of dirt on one cheek. That was a concern, if the filmmaker decides not to bother with an authentic look, maybe they'll be lazy in building suspense and delivering shocks, and let boring horror movie clichés do all the work for them, and they're all here; - A Flashback/Delusion/Dream, call it what you will, is the scariest part of the movie.People jump at shadows and all scares are comprised of something jumping towards camera accompanied by a loud music stab.Someone is missing, let's spread out and look.It is now maybe two nights since I watched Dead Birds, usually I have some scrawled notes with maybe a half page of points and reminders, and I let my memory do the rest, in this case I already can't remember the last two thirds of the film.Final Rating – 5.5 / 10. It's just not that good.If you liked this (or even if you didn't) check out oneguyrambling.com

moviesleuth2 "Dead Birds" is a movie that I neither liked nor hated. After watching it, I really couldn't care less about it. What's interesting is why I watched it. I never really watch movies that haven't been released in theaters, as those are notoriously awful. But I don't know. Something about a movie called "Dead Birds" just intrigued me in some way. I knew I was going to end up seeing it, but I was somehow reluctant.But that's beside the point. In the end, "Dead Birds" is just too unmemorable (in any sense of the word) to really remember, much less see. I wouldn't recommend seeing it, but, if for some reason you have a compulsion to see it, it's not the worst thing you could do.A group of bank robbers (at least I think that's what they are, they didn't seem to come out with any more than they came in) escape from a big score and take refuge in a safehouse. But something evil resides there...Not much happens in "Dead Birds." This is a movie that has to rely on atmosphere and a connection between the audience and the characters on screen. Unfortunately, first time feature film director Alex Turner isn't able to accomplish this. Part of this is because of the poor screenplay, but Turner can't establish an ominous atmosphere, and that's what is so crucial in a movie like this.The acting is adequate at best. Henry Thomas (yes, Elliot from E.T.) is the most effective, but he's really not given much to work with. Isaiah Washington looks positively bored, and would probably rather be anywhere but on the set of this movie. Patrick Fugit, who shined in "Almost Famous," does what he can, but that's not much. Michael Shannon, known for playing creeps and borderline psychotics, is in the same boat. No one else is worth remembering.One of the more noticeable flaws with "Dead Birds" is that the ominous presence isn't fully explained. Neither the characters nor us know what we're dealing with, and that severely hinders the film's effectiveness.To be fair, "Dead Birds" has some creepy moments, but they don't last long, and they aren't that effective anyway. But all in all, it's clear that this is a low-budget first feature from a director. It's okay, but you could do better.