SusannahDead Birds on DVD
October 5th 2006 08:54
Dead Birds
Directed by Alex Turner.
Written by Simon Barrett.
Anybody out there seen a little-known fright-flick called Scarecrows? I think it was released in 1988. Anyone…how about a show of hands…no? When I was a teenager I saw a battered VHS copy on the shelf of a drab little Video Rental Whatever. The place closed down soon after. Anyway…it was a cool little movie. Creepy. Largely inexplicable. And it featured one of the most inspiringly grisly scenes I’d been a witness to.
Now, I don’t know if this is mere coincidence or not but the debut film from Alex Turner does bear a marked resemblance to that forgotten horror movie. Hell, the signature scene from Scarecrows is even reworked for Dead Birds (and again, it’s a standout scene). I’m not complaining. I dig Dead Birds and I think it’s one of the best low-budget American horror movies I’ve seen in a good few years, maybe one of the better horror movies I’ve seen full-stop.
What you get for your rental fee (or purchase price if you’re one of those must-own-it kind of people…I am) is the bones of the Scarecrows plot, fleshed out with sinew peeled from the Ju-On movies of Takashi Shimizu and transposed into a Civil War context.
The resulting film is a master-class in American Gothic.
Here’s the scene…
Following a violent but largely successful bank robbery a handful of desperate and be-grimed Civil War deserters drift off through the war-ravaged countryside looking for a previously-arranged contact point. Cue scenes of churned mud and human scavengers picking the valuables off corpses.
That the hero of the piece (ably played by Henry Thomas) is introduced just minutes before he puts a bullet through a child’s face indicates a fair degree of ambiguity as to the nature of the protagonists. This vibe is maintained throughout.
Said contact-point is revealed to be a truly creepy old plantation-house located at the heart of a dense corn-field. Undeterred by the sudden appearance of a ghoulish quadruped with a distorted but unpleasantly human face (which they shoot) our valiant deserters make their way to the afore-mentioned plantation house.
Once there the tension mounts as the deserters begin to lose trust in one another – after all there is a lot of gold at stake and the fewer that make it through the night the bigger the survivor’s shares will be.
Obviously, things get creepy…Japanese horror creepy, not American let’s-just-splash-blood-over-everything-and-make-loud-noises scary.
Awful children cower under beds. Eerie voices emanate from deep within a stone well (I know, I know…Ringu right). There’s something really horrible hiding in the stables and the skinless body of a slave in the basement.
Where Dead Birds succeeds is in its reluctance to provide the audience with easy answers for the supernatural goings-on (with the exception of a scene involving an extremely talkative Deadwood-style ghost…I could have lived without that bit). Even the film’s evocative title is never really explained. Thus, by the time the truly inspired and quite opaque ending has transpired the viewer is left a little alienated and hopefully a lot unsettled. Yeah…there’s a few inconsistencies but that’s pretty much par for the course with genre fare.
The acting is actually pretty good. The sense of consuming dread is kept consistent throughout. The cinematography is superb and makes the most of ill-lit passageways and scuttling shadows. And the special effects (used sparingly) are original and contribute to the atmosphere.
Oh…and corn-stalks rattling together like picked bones are always the height of cinematic eeriness. So, consider it recommended.
Directed by Alex Turner.
Written by Simon Barrett.
Anybody out there seen a little-known fright-flick called Scarecrows? I think it was released in 1988. Anyone…how about a show of hands…no? When I was a teenager I saw a battered VHS copy on the shelf of a drab little Video Rental Whatever. The place closed down soon after. Anyway…it was a cool little movie. Creepy. Largely inexplicable. And it featured one of the most inspiringly grisly scenes I’d been a witness to.
Now, I don’t know if this is mere coincidence or not but the debut film from Alex Turner does bear a marked resemblance to that forgotten horror movie. Hell, the signature scene from Scarecrows is even reworked for Dead Birds (and again, it’s a standout scene). I’m not complaining. I dig Dead Birds and I think it’s one of the best low-budget American horror movies I’ve seen in a good few years, maybe one of the better horror movies I’ve seen full-stop.
What you get for your rental fee (or purchase price if you’re one of those must-own-it kind of people…I am) is the bones of the Scarecrows plot, fleshed out with sinew peeled from the Ju-On movies of Takashi Shimizu and transposed into a Civil War context.
The resulting film is a master-class in American Gothic.
Here’s the scene…
Following a violent but largely successful bank robbery a handful of desperate and be-grimed Civil War deserters drift off through the war-ravaged countryside looking for a previously-arranged contact point. Cue scenes of churned mud and human scavengers picking the valuables off corpses.
That the hero of the piece (ably played by Henry Thomas) is introduced just minutes before he puts a bullet through a child’s face indicates a fair degree of ambiguity as to the nature of the protagonists. This vibe is maintained throughout.
Said contact-point is revealed to be a truly creepy old plantation-house located at the heart of a dense corn-field. Undeterred by the sudden appearance of a ghoulish quadruped with a distorted but unpleasantly human face (which they shoot) our valiant deserters make their way to the afore-mentioned plantation house.
Once there the tension mounts as the deserters begin to lose trust in one another – after all there is a lot of gold at stake and the fewer that make it through the night the bigger the survivor’s shares will be.
Obviously, things get creepy…Japanese horror creepy, not American let’s-just-splash-blood-over-everything-and-make-loud-noises scary.
Awful children cower under beds. Eerie voices emanate from deep within a stone well (I know, I know…Ringu right). There’s something really horrible hiding in the stables and the skinless body of a slave in the basement.
Where Dead Birds succeeds is in its reluctance to provide the audience with easy answers for the supernatural goings-on (with the exception of a scene involving an extremely talkative Deadwood-style ghost…I could have lived without that bit). Even the film’s evocative title is never really explained. Thus, by the time the truly inspired and quite opaque ending has transpired the viewer is left a little alienated and hopefully a lot unsettled. Yeah…there’s a few inconsistencies but that’s pretty much par for the course with genre fare.
The acting is actually pretty good. The sense of consuming dread is kept consistent throughout. The cinematography is superb and makes the most of ill-lit passageways and scuttling shadows. And the special effects (used sparingly) are original and contribute to the atmosphere.
Oh…and corn-stalks rattling together like picked bones are always the height of cinematic eeriness. So, consider it recommended.
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Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
I was also a fan of Scarecrow and can see where the similarities lie. Still Dead Birds can standa lone as one of the few unnerving efforts of recent years.