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.

I'm a bit surprised by some of the more negative reviews of Dead Birds - I can only assume that those who are disappointed are looking for something more slasher-oriented that piles gore on gore. That's a pity, if so, because Dead Birds is something far more effective - a creepy chiller that derives as much of its tension from the location and the environment as it does from any shock moments that may occur. The use of lighting is mostly excellent (although there are odd scenes where you wonder what the light man thought he was doing). The cast are well-cast, well-matched and more than capable of giving a good performance. The only reason I give the film a 7 (as opposed to an 8) is the quality of the special effects which, to me, seem pretty bog-standard. Pity they didn't use a bit more imagination there but this is still a good-quality creepy film which is well worth seeing.

Dead Birds is Great, a modern horror masterpiece.SPOILERS AHEAD!!!You know when you saw the Shining for the first time and felt like there was never going to be a movie that amounted to the standard of Kubrick. Well, personally, i found it, and it is the 2004 horror film DEAD BIRDS. The film starts off with a bang (LITERALLY). The first 3 to 5 minutes of this horror/western is gory and violent as hell. Four or five people are massacred and gunned down by who we learn to be our main characters. After the massacre our group of ravenous outlaws head on the road. They then meat creatures of a lovecrafteian sort, skinned corpses, mutilated slaves, mangled and disfigured faces,and to top it off an ambiguous ending. On a film making stand point, for a low budget film its very well done. The production design alone is creepy and masturbatory. The film is set in the late 1800's in the western part of the states (Possibly MISSISSIPPI). The film fears dirty and grungy. The actors look dirty and grungy. Now, the actors in the film are very good. There are many actors who all give wonderful performances but like i said there is a lot of actors so i'm not going to tell them off. But note to self, there all very good!The creature effects alone are what holds this film on its claws, there great and creepy. Within the film there are these flesh, scrawny creatures and of course their scary looking. Their so freaky it might take a week to get there scary facial features out of your thought bank.overall, DEAD BIRDS is great modern psychological horror film. Its a deficient experience. Alex Turner, show first directorial film was DEAD BIRDS does a wonderful job at finding the moment in every creepy scene. The film is a wonderful, eerie, and frighting masterpiece. Also, i am a fan of Scream Factory and hopefully, claws crossed, that COLUMBIA pictures gets there proverbial head out of their tush and lets SF gain the rights to some of there greatest products like Fright Night, Brain Scan, 976-Evil, and of course DEAD BIRDS. Can you imagine a collectors edition of those and more (Oh my Lucifer that's great).

By rights 'Deadbirds' shouldn't be anything special and, in some ways, it isn't. However, it is just about better than 90% of the other horror B-movies out there.It doesn't have much of a budget (and I don't recognise a single cast-member from anything else!), but it does make the best of a decently creepy location, as we follow a gang of bank robbers in post civil war America, as they take refuge in an abandoned farm house before they get ready to divvy up the loot and go their separate ways. Naturally, they get more than they bargained for, as surviving the night becomes increasingly difficult. They soon find there's a particularly nasty presence already there and it's not going to let them off lightly.It's dark and broody and the acting (for what's needed) is decent enough. If you're not a fan of horror films then this one probably isn't good enough to win you over. However, if you're a fan f creepy little monster movies then you may just want to watch this one. It's one of those films that's definitely better value if you haven't paid to watch it. Rent or see it on TV before you buy.http://thewrongtreemoviereviews.blogspot.co.uk/