Deadbirds
Deadbirds is director Alex Turner's 3rd movie and unfortunately it's his worst [according to IMDB]. I haven't seen his first two directional flicks but I have seen Blood & Donuts, a film where he was the cinematographer and has recieved less than favourable reviews which I think were a little unjust but the film does suffer from an extremely slow plot movement focusing instead on unnesscessary character development.Unfortunately, Deadbirds suffers from both lack of character attachment, slow plot movement and is also confusing to the viewer.
Deadbirds concerns a band of outlaw confederate soldiers who rob a bank and take refuge in an abandoned plantation. However, as the night settles in around them, supernatural forces within the house manifest themselves to reveal a dark and gruesome past. The initial concept seems sound but as the film progresses it quickly falls into clichéd territory and formulaic horror plotlines which is very disappointing and general apathy sets in where you don't care who dies as long as someone does.
An interesting side-note is that the film was shot in 30 days on the set of Big Fish after it wrapped up. However, a low budget movie is no excuse for being lazy and unimaginative. The title itself is confusing as there is only one dead bird in the film and it doesn't refer to something only the viewer knows and the characters are unaware of - I'm not sure why it was even called that. Secondly, the background as to why the plantation was haunted is skimmed over without going into great detail and there is general confusion as to why the dead return as beasts. Huge pink beasts, one of which the characters come accross on the way to the plantation which is simply ignored even though it is clearly not any animal that is common to the region, or earth in general.
Unfortunately this film falls down in almost every area under critique. It will neither excite nor astound and the plot is both predictable and dull, taking its cues from clichés in previous films of similar genre before it. Come back Saw 2, all is forgiven!
I would give this film 2 slaves out of 5.
Labels: Film
posted by Phil @ 10:44 pm
7 Comments:
WTF?!? I can't believe you think that. Either you were out of the room when the part about why the house is supernatural was explained or you just didn't get it. Without that you wouldn't have understood a fair whack of the movie and I can see why you therefore wouldn't like it, but the film does explain the houses history about half-way through (when the basement door is first opened and the guy goes down there - I won't go into any more detail cause it would spoil the film, but suffice to say that a lot was explained in that scene!).
> The initial concept seems sound
> but as the film progresses it
> quickly falls into clichéd
> territory and formulaic horror
> plotlines
Again, wtf? I thought it was a very original idea for a film - a horror based in America during the civil war, where people are initially a lot more concerned with getting as big a share of the stolen gold than they are with staying alive. By the end, infighting and greed have allowed them to make a series of fatal decisions and the house strikes.
It's hard to justify this movie without giving away parts and ruining it, but to say that the plot is formulaic is just wrong. Yes it was a horror designed to make you scared, but that's where the similarity to most other horrors ended.
I think the title of the movie is called Deadbirds cause of the fact that there are no birds in the area (the scarecrow in the field by the house, not to mention the house itself, drives them away - perhaps you didn't realise that there were no birds anywhere around the house bar the dead one), but the title of a movie means nothing compared to its content.
Secondly the background as to why the plantation was haunted isn't skimmed over - it's laid out for you plain and simple about half-way through the movie. It's only "skimmed over without going into great detail" at the start of the film, because if they explained it all straight away then you would know what the score was and you wouldn't be as scared. For the most part you know what the characters know, and that's what makes it scary - you can more easily put yourself in their place.
Finally the huge pink beast thing. I won't explain any of that bar to say that it is explained in the houses background (half-way through the movie as stated above). If you missed that then you missed the films point and plot!
It sounds like you didn't understand the movie rather than didn't like it - I thought it was all good and even at the end, where more people were about to fall for the same fate, you sorta wished that you could follow the new group into the house to see how they fair.
I would give it 4 fields of dead corn out of 5 at least.
Out of interest, you say that this film was a rip-off of many others like it. Care to name a few? :-)
Not that I've seen the film, but it does sound to me like it's a bit ripped off from Deathwatch
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286306/
in tone at least, and from What Skry says in terms of the circular nature of the film. You could spit and hit a haunted house film though... well if you're in the horror section of a video shop...
It was an original idea for a horror movie right up until they got to the house [about 15 minutes into the film] then it broke down into clichés - individuals wandering off by themselves and getting killed.
The civil war had nothing to with the film at all except for the setting of context.
I agree however that a films title has little to do with the film itself but it could have been called something more appropriate.
The background to the story is dealt with half way through but it's done in a confusing manner. I think more time could have been spent delving into the background to give the film a little more depth and add a more chilling realism to the characters current predicament.
I understood the film but some scenes are confusing to the audience which I cannot go into here as I would ruin it for others.
Other films this movie ripped off:
All films where characters wander off by themselves and get killed until there's only a few left - of which there are loads.
It's not so much the house that's haunted as the area. Even the locals give the area a wide berth and no one even mentions the previous inhabitants.
Also I've seen Deathwatch and I guess it's a bit like that in so much as you never know what's going to happen or where it's going to happen from: everyone is being stalked and they don't know why or how.
If you mixed The Ring with Deathwatch and set it in 1863 America with a group of greedy outlaws then you would get the rough idea of what the film is like.
Either way, it's like saying "Deathwatch is set in a world war, so it must be like Saving Private Ryan". It's nothing like SPR in the slightest, but the settings are identical. Deadbirds is set in a "haunted house", but that doesn't make it similar to Ghostbusters cause they both had ghosts in them, or to The People Under The Stairs cause that was set in a spooky house...
I have to agree with Phil on this one. Its a cliched haunted house pic that likes to think its being intelligent. The central premise is a house in which people suffered gruesome deaths and come back from the dead to exact the same fate on anyone who dares enter the house. Hardly new! Most scenes are highly predictable and therefore arent remotely scary or interesting.
As for the pink beast issue - still does not explian the ending adequately.
I know people kept wondering off, but they did it with good reason (at first they didn't know the house was haunted, some of them hated others and so on), that reason being that they didn't know the house was haunted. When they realised that something was wrong they tried to put their differences behind them.
Also if the house decided to kill them all at once within the first 5 minutes instead of picking them off one at a time then it would make a pretty crappy 20-minute-long horror.
At least it would have been over sooner ;)
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