Dead Birds may be a small budget horror movie, but it succeeds in doing what any great horror film should do – it makes you too scared to keep watching, but to glued to the screen to hit the stop button. The movie achieves this level of suspense through great use of lighting, sound, music, story, and, above all, great acting by a group of character actors.
The movie is basically a haunted house story, but set in 1863 during the American Civil War. It takes place in the backwoods of Alabama and involves a group of Confederate soldiers who rob a shipment of gold coins and hide out in an old “abandoned” farm in the middle of a huge cornfield. Now, both the “abandoned house” and the “huge cornfield” devise have been used so much you would think even people in 1863 would know better, but our poor soldiers don’t and ride right on into the evil that waits.
Once there, the group of soldiers, including Henry Thomas (E.T. and Gangs of New York), Isaiah Washington (Ghost Ship) and Patrick Fugit (Saved! Almost Famous), are slowly tormented and tortured by the lingering demons from events that happened way before they got there. One by one, the soldiers are picked off like cattle by creepy ghost, eerie looking monsters, and each other. By the end of the movie, you are thinking that you were lucky to make it through the whole thing without one of those creatures coming out of the T.V. to get you.
Henry Thomas does an excellent job as William, a violent outlaw and makeshift leader of the group. He is the center actor in the piece and really shows how good an actor he can be when given the chance. Throughout the movie, you are not sure if you should be rooting for Thomas, or any of the group, to make it out alive or be fodder for the demons. He starts the movie by accidentally shooting a kid during the bank robbery and never tries to lift his character from that point. The entire gang kills more than 20 people in the opening minutes of the film, and yet you still find yourself hoping these people make it out of this house alive.
Washington also shines as an ex-slave riding with the Confederate soldiers and slowly going crazy throughout the film. His scenes keep you guessing if the demons, monsters and ghost that we are watching are real or just in the outlaws’ heads. Although each character has scenes similar to Washington, he does an excellent job of showing just how much torment these guys are going through and how it could just be greed and madness more than supernatural.
The movie was written by Simon Barrett and directed by Alex Turner – who makes excellent use of the set (which was an actual old farm house in the middle of no where), lighting and sound. Turner also knows how to make a haunted house movie scary again in the classic “less is more” way that has been lost in the wake of CGI over the top wannabe thrillers such as The Haunting. This was more than likely due to budget restraints, but Turner uses his small budget to add to the film rather than detract from its quality. He films scenes in odd angles to add to the suspense of what is happening, shoots scenes in a tight frame (such as filming under the bed) to add to a sense of claustrophobia, and lets the house become a character thanks to its natural creepiness rather than heavy special effects.
Turner also makes the audience work to find out what is actually going on during the movie. Rather than having the ghost tell the whole story or leaving everything in the open for you, Turner films a character walking by the camera and makes the audience think to look at the person’s reflection for a clue. He also makes you rewind a scene to make sure you saw a ghost when you thought you did or has something jump out at you in a pure “Hitchcock” kind of way.<!--page-->
Turner also uses a natural style of lighting to add to the overall spookiness of the house. Each actor carries around lanterns and every corner in the house seems dark. At times it seems, there are things moving in the darkness that aren’t there and that is what makes this a really great horror film. It gets in your head and makes you start looking for things that might be there and being scared of things that aren’t there at all.
Through its use of mood and camera work, Dead Birds proves that you don’t need a 100+ million dollar budget, huge CGI special effects and a brand name star to make a scary movie. All you need is a truly good story, actors willing to work at their parts, a director with an eye for filming and an audience wanting to be scared like they haven’t been in years.
The movie includes several special features including deleted scenes, such as an alternate opening adding to how bad the gang is, a making special feature that is great for film buffs because it shows the difficulties of making a low budget horror film and what drew the actors to the project. It really is a no holds look at the film industry and just how hard it is to get a film to the screen.
Dead Birds is out now on DVD in the US and available via Amazon . UK readers can pick it up from May 16 or pre-order via Amazon UK .
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