Sadly Over-hyped

Overrated and overhyped

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

OK, I admit, the effects were pretty well done. The music - pretty darn good. The way this was shot however, was somewhat similar to a TV series, not as cinematic as I hoped. The thing that REALLY stood out to me was how brightly lit everyone was in every scene. Think of a large house in the middle of a corn field at night with no electricity...it would be super dark and a lantern would only light several feet from where you hold it. If you pay attention, there's light brightening up a room just below the camera at floor level in every interior shot, there are artificial lights put behind objects and so obviously in shadowed areas, it was extremely distracting to me and if this were lit better, it would have totally changed the look and feel. If a set is lit well, you can't tell, that's the trick of it all. Even in the corn field during the rain storm, it looks like all the actors have a set of car headlights on them...crazy.

Dead Birds: Directed by Alex Turner. Written by Simon Barrett.This movie was a suggestion from a filmmaking friend of mine. Thank you Marcus Kempton. The writer of this film has become partnered recently with filmmaker Adam Wingard who made You're Next, The Guest and the awful Death Note film. This has quite the cast in it especially the fact that most went on to do great things. It is about a group of bandits who steal gold and hole away in an abandoned plantation. This is when things get crazy and weird in a good way. First things first, the production design in this movie is superb. It looks and feels like the time of the Civil War. It was beautifully done. The creature effects are really good and generally unnerving to look at. The acting is excellent across the board. All the actors play their parts well and I felt like they were stuck in this insane situation that kept getting worse. The issue I had with the movie is everything attempting to make the film scary was routine. It had the requisite jump scares. You knew when they were coming and how. You could predict most of the plot down to the minute they were about to do the reveal. Sometimes this isn't such a bad thing. It's all in how the filmmaker handles it. This filmmaker was given a golden opportunity that was a bit squandered. It had moments that were hokey and the horror elements felt out of place until the ending when things were ramped up tenfold. It had an ending that was suppose to shock but honestly doesn't. It is an interesting solid little movie. I give the movie a C.

Wow, DEAD BIRDS starts off on a strong footing, with an well-staged bank robbery and subsequent trek through the countryside by a band of renegade soldiers who've abandoned their army during the American Civil War. The film boasts strong production values for a low budget, and plenty of atmosphere in its depiction of the war-torn countryside. The cast is pretty interesting too, with the likes of former child star Henry Thomas, a pre-fame Michael Shannon, and Isaiah Washington excelling as the soldiers-turned-outlaws.I really thought we were going to be in for something special here, because for the first hour DEAD BIRDS puts every foot right, especially thanks to a wonderful soundtrack. It's all single, extended notes and distorted noise, and it builds up a superbly creepy atmosphere as the gang reach a haunted house in the middle of nowhere and bed down for the night.Then, sadly, it falls apart. Nothing much is explained, and instead the group are picked off one by one by barely-seen spirits. There are some gory bits, and some more creepy bits, but none of it makes much sense, and it stays like that till the very end. I loved the Lovecraftian flavour of the unfolding incidents but with a better story this could have been something special; as it is it just sort of lapses into nothingness.

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.