All right then, this evening we've got Dead Birds in the DVD player (not literally), and the DVD has
a pretty cool menu thing going on, with creepy sounds and animated flotsam and
stuff. And it stars Henry
Thomas (of ET fame) and some other people, and one Patrick Fugit. And I’m curious as to how his name is pronounced.
I imagine it is probably “Fugue-it” which is what people would yell
to J.S. Bach when stuff got dull. But
it could be “Fug-it” which sounds pretty bad, nearly rude in fact, or it
might be “Fudge-it” which is what Chef from “South Park” said when he
really wanted to say “Fug-it.”
Well, enough of these shenanigans, let’s get this thing started.
And it turns out if you copy this, you’re looking at five years in jail
and $250,000 dollars. And so on.
And we start getting our credits, and some black bars fly up over a sandy
landscape and spell out Dead Birds. It’s
all, well, pretty Blair Witch Project-y, and some of the credits are
spelled with “f”s for “s”s, like “Cafting by Shannon Makhanian.”
Unless there’s a production role called a “cafter.”
Which there may be. But
then, there’s also a “coftume designer.”
And the credits over with, we fade to black, and then open on “Fairhope,
Alabama, 1863” as the subtitle informs us.
It’s a small down with an early kind of mall or something, there’s a
big building that seems to take up the whole block. Lots of insect noises.
And we seem to follow some old doctor guy as he walks down the block, but
then we lose him, and we go to a group of Confederate soldiers.
They dismount at the Commerce Bank, and go inside.
The leader asks one of the clerks to go get the manager.
The clerk goes off to comply.
The Manager comes out, and the leader says they have some stuff (a bag marked
“Mint”) to deposit, and the manager asks if they have a note from their
corporal. A note is duly handed
over, and we cut outside, to see some more Confederate soldiers slogging into
town. The music is a bit ominous.
Two guards wonder who these new arrivals can be, and figure they are not
good people.
Inside, the manager has finished checking the note, and says they can put the
Mint bag in the vault (“The best one in the state”) but they have to sign
for it first. Leader sees no
problem with this.
Outside, the new arrivals banter a bit with the two guards.
The new arrivals have some business with the bank, but the guards say
they’ll “have to wait a few minutes.”
They decide not to wait, and kill the two guards, then go inside and gorily
dispatch most of the people inside. Some
pretty good gore effects, here. They
grab the bags of Mints and leave. But
some of the soldiers file out of someplace else and shoot at the robbers, but
the robbers shoot the soldiers without much problem.
The robbers also manage to kill a little boy, and that’s probably not
good for their karma.
The robbers ride on, and pause in a nice arboreal glen.
One of them was hit in the shoulder, but he insists he is okay.
The robbers discuss how many people will be after them, and the consensus
seems to be, not too many at first, but more later.
They continue to ride off, and ride some more through some woods and stuff, and
they come across a wagon which has a bunch of dead bodies and some people
picking over these dead bodies, looking for wallets and things like that.
The bank robbers ask where the Hollister place is, and they don’t get
any useful information. It seems there is no Hollister place, or a creek
whereby it might be found against, according to the wallet robbers.
Two of the more thuggish members of the robbers think this means the robber
leader’s plans stink, and this is simply the latest stink to emanate from
them.
So, the riders ride off, and the other guys watch them, and the riders watch the
other guys watch them. And we get
some more very nice scenery. And
more Blair Witch soundtrack echoing vastnesses or maybe cellos.
At length, they come to a cornfield, beyond which is a house which they figure
is the Hollister place. They
can’t see a path to the house, so they just trample down the cornfields where
the corn of wrath is stored.
One of them, who is female, spots a scarecrow. But not just any scarecrow.
It seems to be a body put up as a scarecrow.
It creeps everyone out for a moment, but they all move on.
And they keep moving on, until something pale with sharp teeth bursts
through the corn and runs away from them. The
wounded guy shoots it, though, and it falls over dead.
Seems to be a pale person with empty eye sockets.
They all gather round the body and speculate about it, some saying it was
a skinned human, others say it was a wild boar. Yeah, well, they’re pretty similar aren’t they.
Looks like our cover creature, to be honest, a rather raw looking
humanoid with empty eye sockets and sharpened teeth.
Leader decides getting to the house is a good idea, so they do that.
Just before they get to the house, a big storm rolls in.
Leader yells out how they’re leaving for Mexico in the morning.
And they get to the house, and it is large and deserted.
Wounded guy notes how he just stepped on a dead bird (hey!), but female
(Annabelle) says Yeah, whatever, we need to get that bullet out of your
shoulder. Not before a shock cut to
the dead bird, of course. What are
friends for? And a zoom to the
bird, too, accompanied by red filters and loud insects.
Then a match being lit. A lantern
lit (I guess) and people wandering inside (now that it’s dark, I guess they
waited a long while because, uh, something).
They see some dust patterns disturbed and figure it was tramps, so
they’re going to go looking for these scofflaws.
How dare they, etc.
One robber decides to check, now, to see if the gold is real, and he is
satisfied that it is. Leader
tells him not to worry about that now, as there may be tramps. And you know tramps can’t be good, unless they’re the
ones who sang about a “disco inferno” all those years ago. Those tramps were okay, besides they were Trammps.
Also, it is unlucky to check about gold when you are in a house of death,
because…it just is. Of course, they didn’t have movies back in 1863 so
perhaps they might be unaware of this simple rule.
So the two guys who didn’t like Leader go upstairs, and they talk about how
this is a rich man’s house, but now they’ve got more money than this
theoretical rich man so that is all right and fine for them.
But they’re uneasy because the gold they stole hasn’t been divided
into easily sharable parts. They both agree this stinx.
The one guy who seems most evil says that if the one black guy in the gang (he
uses the bad N word) gets the same as everyone else, he (Mr. Mean) will be very
unhappy. The Fat Guy says nothing.
They agree to split up their room searching duties
Downstairs, Leader is poking through some rooms as well, and he finds an old
picture of a family, the music telling us this is ominous and should be heeded.
He doesn’t though, he goes on to where Black Guy is struggling with a
door. Black Guy says the door
isn’t locked, but it won’t open, and even Leader can’t persuade it to do
so. As they both struggle, we get a
shot from the other side and a musical sting, but back up top they decide this
is worthless. “We’ll find
something to pry it open,” says Leader. “Let’s
come back to it.”
Black Guy looks less than assured, but we cut upstairs anyway.
Fat Guy is walking into some room on the upper floor.
You know, we’re twenty minutes in, and I’ve been having this growing sense
of déjà vu, as if I’ve watched all this before.
And then it strikes me. I
have seen this movie before. And
I reviewed it on this very site, but it had a different title, a different
time-frame, and a different locale. Still,
it seems very, very similar. (This
brought out a flood of writing which I moved to the end of this review, since it
is more or a wrap-up thing.)(The name of the other movie?
You’ll find out then!)
So, Fat Guy is walking into a room. Oh,
the suspense. The music is
all tense high strings and low rumblings, and he pokes his lantern in the dark
room, and seems to find nothing, except he hears demonic giggling.
He asks if anyone’s in the room, and doesn’t get an answer.
He pokes his gun under the bed and tells the gigglers to “come on, get
out” but no one does, so he turns to leave and gets scared by Mr. Mean, who
likes scaring people.
”Why you do that?” asks Fat Guy.
”Well, like the breeze through the trees, Corporal,” Mr. Mean answers.
If you call that an answer. Fat
Guy says he found nothing, Mr. Mean found nothing as well, other than some
clothes. The two of them decide to check the “barn out back.”
I should point out that their lanterns seem awfully bright for Civil War
era technology, but then, I should lighten (ha!) up.
Film-makers have to be practical as well.
Speaking of practical, someone is pulling the bullet (sounds like a euphemism)
from Wounded’s wound. It’s
Annabelle and she tosses some liquor on the wound, and while Blair Witch ambient
low noise plays, it kind of seems like Wounded and Annabelle are having a
moment, if you know what I mean.
Outside, Mr. Mean and Fat Guy approach the barn. They’re cautious and stuff (what with all the Blair Witch
noises and stuff), and…it turns out it’s not Fat Guy and Mr. Mean, it’s
Black Guy and (I think) Leader. This
film is pretty dark and everyone is dressed similarly (everyone has a hat).
Anyway, they’re in the slave quarters.
They find what looks like maybe a skeleton and also a book, with crabbed
writing and a number of bloodstains in it.
“There’s a book over here,” Black Guy announces for those in the
audience unfamiliar with such things. He
also says that the book contains “spells, for raising the dead.”
And NOW we cut to Fat Guy and Mr. Mean, checking out the barn.
Mr. Mean immediately starts on how the gold should be divided.
While Fat Guy tries to count up the number of gold sharers (in response
to Mr. Mean’s assertion that dividing the gold by two is easier), Mr. Mean
says that Wounded “already has a bullet” and how Fat Guy could “take care
of our lady friend.”
Just then Leader and Black Guy show up, and Mr. Mean reports that they’ve
found nothing here, but it will be nice that the storm will wash away any tracks
they might have left on their way here.
”Ground’ll be muddy tomorrow. Leave
tracks that’ll last for days,” Black Guy says.
”You hear me ask for your opinion, boy? Cause
I didn’t,” Mr. Mean says.
Black Guy considers his response for a moment.
”Ain’t no boys in here, speculator.”
”I wouldn’t speculate on you. I
wouldn’t have no use for you. None
at all.”
”I don’t see any palm trees for you to hide behind up in here.”
”Oh, boy, I’d knock those eyes straight in your head,” Mr. Mean says.
”Shut up, the both of you,” says Leader, speaking on behalf of audiences
everywhere.
Fat Guy laughs and says, “Yeah, I wonder how they got up in there.
Ain’t no ladder.” Who “they” are is unexplained, as well as where “up in
there” is, though I suspect some kind of hayloft.
”Place is gonna turn me into a little girl,” says Mr. Mean.
Uh, good, thanks for alerting us.
This guy definitely seems to be trying for his Non-Sequitor Merit Badge.
Leader notes that if anyone was here, they’re long gone now.
And everyone leaves the barn, and we cut to some people playing poker.
Could be Fat Guy, Wounded and Mr. Mean but they’ve all taken their has
off so it’s anyone’s guess.
Leader and Annabelle decide they’re going to go try out one of the beds
upstairs. Wounded (pretty sure
it’s him) looks askance at this prospect but doesn’t say anything.
And Leader and Annabelle kiss and go on upstairs.
They choose one room and start kissing and undressing.
I’ll say this for the music, it never lets up on the minor chord lonely
gloom noise, even when folks are getting it on.
Turns out, naturally, they’re getting it on in a room right above the
poker game, so everyone gets to hear the groaning and what-not.
It distracts only Wounded. Black
Guy decides to leave the room to go think somewhere else.
He takes a bag that he has in a necklace and rubs it around his face,
which may be some kind of voodoo thing or it may just be actorly business. Then, though, he notices something near to us, and moves his
lantern to investigate. It’s
footprints in the dust, leading out of the room and into some other kind of room
with several windows. Again, the
music is promising bad things to come, but then I imagine this kind of music,
played while puppies frolic, would also seem to promise bad things to come.
And the slow motion (not in the literal sense, but in the pacing sense) of all
this also bespeaks of bad stuff, too, right?
Halfway across the floor, the shoe prints seem to turn into simian (or
dog, or otherwise beastly) prints. And…Black
Guy leaves and nothing happens. Well, how about that!
Upstairs, Leader and Annabelle talk (in hard to decipher whispers, and I’m
wearing headphones) about, well the following is a kind of paraphrase:
Annabelle: Do you know
anything about this property, where your folks got it?
Leader: No.
She then talks about how awful it was to watch one of his patriarchs
descend into senility or some such. “He
called me ‘Belle’” is her summation.
Well, gosh, that certainly made this into a totally rich cauldron of
well-rounded characters. Cough.
Now, how about some gruesome deaths?
I’ve said this before, if you want to make a rich character study,
that’s fine, I have no problem with that, but don’t put a scary
ghoul-creature on the cover. You’re
just asking me to be impatient. You
wouldn’t like me when I’m impatient.
”I wanted you the first time I saw you,” confesses Annabelle, just to
further make this the evocative three-d world that it is. Leader says nothing, as the camera slowly tracks in toward
the two of them. Finally, though,
as she appears to be asleep, he says, “Annabelle…I think I killed a kid in
town today.”
Really? What with the blood and the
mother howling in despair, I bet no one noticed (I am being sarcastic).
“Did you see it?” he asks her, and turns to see she’s sleeping.
Down below, the poker game is starting to wind down a bit.
Fat Guy is out, but Wounded and Mr. Mean are needling each other and
still going on. Fat Guy takes a bit
ole swig from a bottle of liquor drinks and I say, Boy Howdy, deal me in.
For liquor drinks.
Fat Guy leaves to put the horses in the barn.
Wounded and Mr. Mean glance at the gold on the table.
But outside, Fat Guy is herding the horses into the barn, and being nice
to them. Now that we know he
didn’t kill the little boy, I kind of feel sorry for Fat Guy, as, let’s look
logically at this, he’s alone in the barn in (what I hope is) a horror movie.
That spells victim in all caps.
The music makes a sudden upturn, as if to awaken whatever demonic forces
are in hiding, waiting to bust out some Fat Guy Whomps.
And he leaves the barn, to go walk out to some ruined brick structure, like a
well or some such. He tosses
a rock into it, and some kid’s voice comes up, asking for help.
Fat Guy is all about helping the youth of today, or at least the youth of
the Civil War era, so he lowers the bucket into the well to try and haul the kid
up.
The “kid” grabs hold and Fat Guy starts to try hauling, but the “kid”
seems a lot heavier than just a regular kid (maybe it’s a Fat Kid, now that
would be ironical). Fat Guy leans
in closer to pull harder, and a dead white arm reaches out and grabs Fat Guy’s
arm and pulls him into the well.
Well, I didn’t see that coming, did you?
You did? Oh.
Well, okay, I confess, I saw it too.
Gosh darn it all.
Back at the house of this film, Black Guy comes back to the poker game room and
asks Wounded, “You okay that’s him?”
Or maybe “You okay there, Sam?”
It might help if we knew his name was Sam.
Wouldn’t it?
Wounded says his wound is “itching” him.
“Mean’s it’s healing,” says Black Guy.
”Mm. Guess so.
How long you think Joseph’s been gone?”
I am going to take a wild stab here and guess Joseph is Fat Guy, because
I don’t think we heard his name earlier.
I wish I didn’t like cheese as much as I do.
Huh? The movie?
Oh, sorry.
No one answers the question about Joseph, but a creepy POV moves through a room.
Actually it’s just a regular POV, not really creepy at all.
And we see Annabelle, sleeping alone in the big bed.
Oh, wait, we pan and she’s not alone, Leader is still there, the bed
just got bigger or she just got annoying and he scooted away to the other side?
Perhaps she snores? The
movie does not answer this query but instead we get a flashback or a dream
sequence or such like. Leader sees
some guy all bandaged up like a mummy but having a way worse time of it than
Boris Karloff ever did. And as he
turns away we see Leader has a bandage on his arm.
And we pull back a bit, and see that he is in an army hospital of some
kind, with gross wounded all around, and Annabelle the nurse comes to him and
slogs water on him via a cloth.
The guy in the next bunk, who was playing with blood and paid the price, says
that Annabelle is the most beautiful chick ever and he’s going to marry her
when he heals all up (which goes to show the horror of war, when Annabelle can
be considered beautiful, it is the product of a deranged mind.
Hey, sorry, but she’s not that cute.
She’s not really cute at all in fact.
Not that she’s horrid looking, but…let’s get back to the movie.)
We track back down to Leader in his bed, he looks over at Mummy, then looks back
at the Next Bunk guy, but the bunk is empty, and Next Bunk Guy rears up from the
floor and starts choking Leader, who wakes up in the big bed with Annabelle
right there and stuff. Why, it was
only a dream! And there’s a knock
at the door.
It’s Wounded, noting the absence of Fat Guy.
Everyone who’s anyone is out looking for him, and Leader says he’ll
be down directly to help out.
And yeah, there they are, outside of the house with lanterns…good thing that
oft promised storm just keeps breaking those promises, because…um, rain is
expensive to film in. Wounded
informs Leader that Black Guy and Mr. Mean are “out back” and he takes the
opp to have some kind of seizure or pain or something that means he’ll have to
play catch-up to join the rest of the group.
He moves off camera anyway.
Next, out in the dark fields, someone is out in the fields looking for Fat Guy
(though he calls out “Doug” or something like that). It’s Wounded, and to his whistle, he hears some rustling
off to the side, and goes to investigate.
(You’d think with the creature they saw earlier they’d be a bit more
careful, but what the heck, right?) Now
he hears rustling on the other side of him (sound design is quite good, I think
I noted this earlier though). Finally
he catches up with the other three guys, mentions that he heard “a dog,” and
Leader says that with the storm coming (cue the rumble) it’ll be hard to find
one’s way around in this large corn field.
Man, this must be the most massive storm in history if it’s been
rumbling like that all this time and still isn’t here.
”He’ll either come back or he won’t,” someone says, making impeccable
use of logic. Leader suggests they
keep their guns handy, and everyone except Mr. Mean goes back inside.
Mr. Mean goes off into the darkness to check on something.
Okay, whatever.
Back inside, Leader tells Black Guy and Wounded that one of them (this
particular three) should be with the gold at all times, as he doesn’t trust
Mr. Mean or Fat Guy. They all agree
this is a good plan, and Leader throws his knife into the wall, because it was a
cool idea for a shot or something.
Outside, Mr. Mean goes into the outhouse (I think) and has a seat.
This is a bit too realistic if you ask me (and you didn’t).
Someone outside starts fooling with a light, and then the outhouse walls
start shaking because (I think) someone is digging furiously.
Mr. Mean stands and dresses and opens the door, but there’s no one
there and all is quiet again. He’s
on alert, though, and he sees some of the corn moving ominously.
Upstairs, Annabelle is getting dressed, and a closet door opens by itself.
She goes over to look. There’s
like a big black bunch of cloth all stuffed into a corner.
And someone on the soundtrack whispers her name.
She turns away from the closet and slowly walks back across the room.
She picks up her lantern and looks under the bed, then lowers her lantern
some more. She sees a small boy
shuffle toward her, and then his face instantly morphs into a hollow-eyed,
needle-toothed, pale creature and she screams.
(It’s a well-done shock.)
Downstairs, Leader, Black Guy and Wounded all listen to her scream and the two
white guys run upstairs, leaving Black Guy with the gold.
Inside the room, Annabelle tells them “There was a boy in here.
He ran outside.” Wounded
goes to look in the hallway.
He comes back and notes that the three of them are the only ones on this floor,
and Leader asks if Annabelle was dreaming.
She gets all upset at this, but then Wounded has a convenient seizure and
collapses, and the two of them go to his aid.
He stands and insists he’s okay, but they make him lie down on the very
bed where Annabelle says she saw something.
I guess they figure it left the room.
Fair enough.
As Leader and Annabelle leave, Wounded says he believes her about the boy.
This is a kind of plot point, as Leader doesn’t believe her.
She tells him to get some rest.
They close the door and go downstairs, and we cut to Black Guy.
He’s having a few sips of his liquor.
He hears something brief, which makes him alert, but we cut to Leader and
Annabelle on the porch. The rain
has finally got here, and they’re arguing over whether he believes her or not.
Blah blah blah, she finally notes that there’s “something wrong”
with the house and they should all leave now.
Well, Leader stands at the edge of the porch in the pouring rain and
notes that conditions don’t seem optimal for travel.
Just then Mr. Mean shows up, asking if Fat Guy came by.
Leader says no, and Mr. Mean says, “I saw a head and shoulders moving
through the rows, but then I didn’t see it no more.
It’s either him or something pretty big.”
Cut to the inside, with some pans along the material with the composer and the
sound guy all goin’ nuts with the ambience and the creepy-outy-ness.
And we cut to Wounded, lying in bed.
He wakes up and it seems to be daylight outside—who wants to bet this
is a dream? He pulls his hands up
to his chest and starts reciting the Our Father…because at the foot of the bed
is the little boy again.
”My parents used to lie together in this bed,” the boy says.
“This is where my mother was when the consumption took her.”
Wounded keeps praying and squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them again, there’s an older gentlemen, a
typical Southern patriarch type, standing where the boy was. “I had to do it,” he says.
“I put the children where they’ll never be found, by anyone.
I tried to bring my wife back, but they tricked me.
They changed my children into demons.”
Wounded is looking like he would really, really like to wake up just
about now.
”Who are you?” the man asks Wounded. “Where
is my wife?” He starts to get a
bit steamed. He raises what might
be an axe. “Where is she!”
Then we cut downstairs, where Leader is relaying the news that Mr. Mean might
have spotted Fat Guy “and doll” (he means “dog” but the soundtrack says
“doll”).
”At least it was some kind of animal,” Mr. Mean says, and looks askance as
Black Guy is playing with the gold.
Mr. Mean says they should divide up the gold now, and Leader says they’ll
divide it when they get to Mexico. This
goes on rather long, but what they heck. Tempers
start to flare. But Mr. Mean backs
down. He decides to get some
rest, though an odd shot shows his hand quivering over his gun, like they were
all seconds away from a battle. As
he leaves, everyone relaxes.
He goes upstairs and sits on a bed, and sits on a weird looking doll with
stitching for eyes and a mouth. He
looks at it while the sound guy and the composer get re-enthused, then he tosses
it aside and lies down.
Downstairs, everyone is resting around the table with the gold on it.
Black Guy hears some weird voices which wake him up briefly, then
there’s a scream and a thud which wakes him up for good.
He suspects something, so he grabs his gun and the lantern and goes to
another part of the house. He goes
to that door that no one could open earlier (we get a brief shot from the other
side) and stands there, ready to shoot something, or to shoot at something.
Then he decides to move on to another room, and someone starts tapping on a
cymbal (on the soundtrack). He goes
to a window and looks outside, and just then a creepy face appears in the heavy
rain and hisses at him. (It looked,
through slow-motion, as if it might have been Wounded.)
Black Guy goes outside to see further what shenanigans folks might be up to.
Indeed, Black Guy calls out Wounded’s real name (which was Sam after
all if you’re keeping score). But
he doesn’t get an answer, so he goes back inside, and as he passes the room
with the closed door, it squeaks slightly open.
He hears it of course, and after poking his gun in the opening, he goes
downstairs. Doesn’t sound smart
to me, but at least he has his gun at the ready.
Upstairs, Mr. Mean is awakened and finds a sobbing child over in the corner of
his room. He picks up the lantern
and goes over to her (it’s a little girl this time).
”Listen, kid, you need to tell me if there’s someone else in this house,”
he says, moving closer. We,
in the audience are expecting another shock cut.
Seems a pity that a film-maker who knows how to generate atmosphere and
sets up some really inventive, creative shots, doesn’t know how to scare
people other than through shock-cuts.
”Did something happen?” he asks her, and sure enough we get our shock-cut as
she turns around. She has a cut
throat, a huge, distorted mouth and eyesockets, and there appears to be nothing
but crushed innards or bone behind these orifices.
Well, Mr. Mean jumps back and grabs his gun belt, but of course there’s
nothing there when he looks again.
And down in the basement, Black Guy is doing some further exploring.
Doesn’t seem to be anything down there other than some haphazard junk
and some blankets, but that’s not stopping the sound man and the composer.
Also, like a lot of this movie, it’s too dark to see anything really
clearly. The palette here is
pretty monochromatic, by which I don’t mean it’s black and white, there seem
to be thinks that are very clearly lit and things that are completely in shadow,
no “grays” so to speak. It’s
like everything has a really brightly lit side, and a really dark side. Kind of like the Force, I guess.
Anyway, Black Guy in the basement. He
finds a leather apron full of various tools.
I see a hammer and (I think) an axe, but I’m not sure if these are
butcher’s tools, medical implements or leatherworker’s stuff.
He finds something curious on the floor, so he picks it up, and it turns
out to be a human jawbone.
He drops it quickly and wipes his hands on his shirt. No, no, Black Guy, that’s why we have napkins!
Suddenly hearing sobs, he turns around, gun at the ready.
“How did you get here?” he asks.
We see a black woman, tied to the ground via four stakes.
She sobs and asks him to please let her go, she promises she won’t say
anything about “the others.” He
asks if she’s a runaway (remember, this was during the Civil War, and you
might recall one of the bases of that war), and starts to cut the bonds holding
her.
Suddenly, though, she screams “He’s here!”
Black Guy whirls around, but sees nothing. She continues to scream, and he goes to look elsewhere, and
her screaming gets more and more intense.
Finally, he turns to her and sees a slit open itself up in her stomach.
It widens and widens, and a bunch of internal organs rise out in a big
ball, and lift themselves from her body. (She’s
still screaming, by the way.) Kudos
to the director for once not using a shock-cut, though I’m sure he’ll make
up for that in the future. Of
course, I don’t know if you could really do a shock-cut with an effect like
this…but then I remember John Hurt. So,
the kudos remain. I wonder what the
hell that was supposed to be, other than a really good gore effect?
Anyway, Black Guy looks on in disbelief, then falls over out of shot, and we cut
back to Mr. Mean upstairs. He hears
something and looks out the window, and sees someone staggering around outside.
”Joseph?” he says, and it might be. It
did look vaguely like a drunken fat guy, though the clothes looked a bit
different. I’m sure he’ll go
outside to check just for us.
Back at the gold table, Leader and Annabelle are sleeping.
A shadow passes over Leader’s face, and after a moment or two he
springs awake and points his gun. He’s
relieved to find out that it’s Wounded, and we get a shot of Wounded in the
shadows, looking pretty twitchy and not at all well.
Hard to see clearly but it looks like he’s somewhat bloody (turns out
his wound is leaking slightly). No
matter, Leader notes that the gold is all gone (hard to tell in the dark like
this). He runs past Wounded on his
way to see Mr. Mean, who he is certain has committed this malfeasance.
Wounded, for his part, says nothing but looks twitchy.
A couple of bright lightning flashes show no blood, or at least not where
he’s framed.
:Leader runs upstairs. He kicks
open all the doors, but finds no Mr. Mean.
Running back downstairs, he tells Wounded to stay and watch over the
sleeping Annabelle (who is a pretty sound sleeper through all this kicking and
shouting). Leader runs
outside, and Wounded moves closer to Annabelle…
Outside, it’s still raining like crazy as Leader dashes around the farm house.
He seems to see something, but after pausing he runs on.
We don’t get to see what he was looking at, so I’m not sure I care.
Inside, Annabelle wakes up and looks at the twitch-o-matic Wounded, and she
doesn’t seem to think this is odd at all.
She asks where Leader is. He
just keeps twitching and doesn’t answer.
She notes the missing gold as well, and when she asks about it, Wounded pipes up
and says Leader is “taking care of it.”
He has a scrap of paper that he’s all a-twitchin’ about, and he
finally puts it on a table.
”What’s that?” she asks.
His next bit of dialogue is hard to decipher.
It’s either an overly accented “A door,” or it might be what it is
phonetically, which is “a doo wah.” He
then goes on to say it’s “a page from that book.”
She questions him further, and he says it’s “no doo wah that you would
understand. It’s for sacrifices.
First all the slaves. The
cheap ones, the females past their prime. We
have to follow certain rituals to be heard.
Most think of them as spirits, and ghosts.
But they’ve always been here. They
exist in a world around our own. They
wanna change what is in this world. They
wanna torment us.”
Annabelle notes how she doesn’t understand this. I’m kind of with her, but I get the gist I think.
It’s The Evil Dead!
He, however, notes how his wound hurts. She
peels off his shirt and the bandage, and it looks pretty bad.
She says they need a doctor. She
goes to get something for the pain, but suddenly Wounded notes that there’s no
pain now. He also speaks in a Louisiana accent and calls her
“Belle” which startles her. (Do
you remember that earlier bit about someone calling her Belle?)
He asks if she wants to see what “they did to me” and he stretches
his hand toward her.
Annabelle notes that she was shot, and she reminds him that she was there when
it happened. So she kind of knows
what they did to him.
”No! Preacher said shooting’s
too good for me!” he snarls. “They
just left me up there to rot for what I did!”
Annabelle notes how this still isn’t terribly clear to her, and Wounded seems
to be undergoing some kind of struggle, here.
She goes toward him, saying “Sam” (Wounded’s actual name as noted)
a bunch of times, until he snarls, “Stop calling me that!” and jumps up at
her. She screams, and we cut to
some bunch of folks in a flashback out in the sun, in the fields, dragging
Patriarch (the guy from earlier) out through these very fields, prior to
stringing him up on a cross. The
leader of the mob asks him where his children are.
”Where they belong!” he shouts.
Mob Leader tells the assembled folk to hoist the guy up on the cross.
(This looks like the scarecrow we saw earlier in the film, and in fact
there’s a quick shot of a figure that looks very similar, before we show
Patriarch pretty unrepentant about the stuff he has (apparently, though not
specifically) done). “I’ve
opened the door,” he shouts. “They’re
here forever.”
Mob Leader says, “Fine, we’ll see that you get a taste of hell in this
world, before you go on to the next.”
They put a sack over Patriarch’s face and Mob Leader laughs evilly.
We get a quick flash of what (I am guessing) was Patriarch’s wife,
sitting on a bed and looking pretty wan, like an ill person.
(“Ill” in the sick sense, not in the contemporary slang
sense.) (“Sick” as in ailing,
not in the contemporary slang sense.)
We then get a very quick montage of the mob leaving (“You’ll see!” shouts
Mob Leader), some pixilated shots of Patriarch on the cross, shots of his wife
on the bed, shots of him thumbing through that book they found with all the
drawings and bloodstains on it, and shots of him and some skinned guy staked out
in the basement, like that black woman from earlier.
Then some more stuff, like wife turning into one of those hollow eyed
needle-toothed things, Patriarch grabbing his son and carrying him off, daughter
hiding in a closet, a great wash of blood on the floor as Patriarch reaches
under the bed to grab someone huddled under there, then some more monster shots,
crawl-thumping along a corridor (quite effective) and rawring from somewhere in
the hayloft.
Finally, we cut back to Annabelle, screaming “No!” So I guess she was seeing all this? She looks over at Wounded who seems much calmer
now. She goes and vomits up some
white fluid.
Outside, Leader is still looking for Mr. Mean and Fat Guy.
But then he comes back inside and notes that Annabelle looks pretty
shaken. He asks what’s going on,
and she says “I saw…everything.”
Leader, though, wonders what’s wrong with Wounded. He goes over to him and discovers the reason that Wounded has
calmed down so much is that he’s dead.
He wants to know what went on here, and Annabelle says “this place!
This place did something to him!”
Leader says, in essence, eh?
”Why would Jeffrey Hollister send us to here?” Annabelle asks.
“What’d he know about this farm?
Leader says, in essence, eh?
Annabelle says “It was a trap, [Leader]!”
Okay, here’s a question that has to be asked.
Do they know Patriarch? Earlier,
you might recall, Annabelle was talking to Leader about some relative of his,
who called her “Belle” and she liked that.
Just a few moments ago, Wounded also called her “Belle.”
She seemed to recognize this voice.
She also asked him, back in the bed, where his family got “this”
property, which is something that was just never really elaborated upon. My thought was that it was a convenient place to go
that this Hollister mentioned, and no one really had any connection to it.
You might also recall that folks mumble rather a lot in this movie.
Maybe the farmhouse is owned by relatives of Leader?
If that’s the case, if anyone recognized Leader, wouldn’t the
farm house be one of the first places the authorities would go?
Would it make sense to hide out there?
But the big question is, did Patriarch set all this up so these people would
come here and find demons?
Well, anyway, back to our story. Black
Guy just shows up then, and says that “the farmer that lived here, he
sacrificed his slaves in some sort of ritual…to bring his wife back.
He killed them because they turned into beasts.
Demons! I saw it.”
(This is quoted from the film, and you’ll note he doesn’t say,
“your relative that lived here.”)
He sits down next to Wounded (who I guess I should call Dead now, but changing
horses etc.) and takes a big ole swig from a bottle. “We need to get out of here, [Leader],” he says, and
he’s on the verge of tears when he says it.
He’s seen some crap, let me tell you.
Of course, I’m rather surprised that he’s seen some crap, and is
still alive, something that doesn’t seem to apply to anyone else in the cast.
He again notes that everyone should get as far away from this house as they can.
But Leader asks about the gold, and notes that Black Guy was the last
assigned guard (although I seem recall he, Leader and Wounded all sleeping next
to it, so guard duty is a pretty flexible position I guess).
Well, Black Guy and Leader pull guns on one another, but Annabelle is there too,
with a razor at Black Guy’s throat. She
notes the odds (two against one) and asks him what he’s thinking about.
He notes that he can still shoot Leader before she can cut his
throat…which of course would make Annabelle all alone in this ole scary house,
something I doubt she’d like (and might put the odds slightly in Black Guy’s
favor). Still, tensions rise
and all that. Leader notes that he
has saved Black Guy’s life “more times than I can count!”
”That don’t make it yours!” Black Guy says, but he puts his gun down.
He says that the gold is worthless, but Leader still wants it pretty bad.
He thinks Fat Guy and Mr. Mean are still around and they want that gold a
lot as well. Black Guy starts
hearing more voices, and he asks if anyone else hears them.
Leader doesn’t. Black Guy
is all for leaving right now, and when he sees Leader is still hesitant, he
decides that he’s going to leave on his own.
So he goes out to the barn, with the other two following, and they
see…that the horses have been eaten, it seems.
Though not eaten all the way, if you get what I mean.
Someone has bad table manners. This
seems to put paid to any idea of non-foot transport.
Black Guy starts to laugh. “Looks
like I’m walking!” he shouts. “Who
the hell could have done this to the horses?” he asks, not really expecting an
answer. Then the voices start up
again, and he asks if anyone hears them. Apparently,
the answer is no, so he collapses, and sees some of the same flash-back stuff we
saw earlier, then he looks up at the hayloft and sees a demon thing leaning over
the edge toward him, saying, in essence, booga-booga.
”I can’t trust my eyes anymore,” he sobs.
“There are worse things than dying,” he continues, echoing the tag
line on the cover of the DVD.
Everyone, having had enough, gets up to leave.
As they all walk through the rain, Leader runs back to the house saying,
“I’m not leaving without that gold!”
“I am,” Black Guy says, and he walks off.
Leader says Annabelle needs to figure if she’s going or staying, she
should go now so she can be with Black Guy and be safer.
She decides to stay with Leader.
Inside, Wounded’s body is gone. This
sparks more from Leader, who says they can’t leave without Wounded.
This riles up Annabelle, who shouts that Leader ought to listen to reason
(ie, her).
Back outside, well, you didn’t think Black Guy was going to get away that
easily, did you? He’s walking
through the cornfields, when he hears scary noises.
Gun at the ready, he advances cautiously. He turns…and walks smack into Dead Wounded, who screams,
and…I’m typing this very carefully…Black Guy flies backwards and explodes
into a CGI effect that looks like streamers.
Dead Wounded seems to think this is a job well done. Me…well, I guess we didn’t see anyone else CGI’d, but,
heck, you know it was probably in the budget so use it or lose it.
Also outside, it now seems, are Annabelle and Leader. I guess her shouting at him convinced him pretty quick (off
screen). They’re running
through the fields, and they come across the Patriarch Scarecrow (a popular
tourist attraction). She’s
thinking let’s keep going, but he’s got a bee in his bonnet about looking at
this thing. He seems to know
that it’s Mr. Mean tied up there. So
he climbs up and frees him.
And when they get Mr. Mean on the ground, and remove the hood over his face, it
turns out that his eyes and mouth have been sewn shut, like the doll from
earlier. Leader asks for
Annabelle’s razor. Leader tries
to cut Mr. Mean’s mouth open, but something sparfs around about then, and both
he and Annabelle are thrown back, and Mr. Mean’s head tears itself off his
neck and goes flying. Tourist,
I suppose.
Annabelle dashes off and gets separated from Leader. She finds herself in the corn stalks, stalked by something
other than corn, so she comes to a stop and looks around. She runs back, yelling out for Leader. And we cut to Leader, also stalking around the stalks,
looking for Annabelle.
They both walk through the stalks, looking distraught and hearing noises.
Leader, gun at the ready, hears something dead ahead and gets off a shot,
and I bet there’s an ironic consequence to this action on his part.
Who’s with me?
Guys?
Well, we may never know, as he kneels over his target and starts sobbing.
Me, my bet is that he shot Annabelle by mistake.
No matter, we fade to the rain stopping, then fade to black.
We get some bird noises, and then we’re in full sunlight, and we see
Leader still kneeling in the corn. We
get a number of angles of this.
And sure enough, we look down, and there’s Annabelle with a bullet hole in her
head (also apparently her throat cut as well). She also seems to be wearing different clothes than she
had on before, but I’ll be generous and say it was dark back then.
We slowly track into to Annabelle, and hey, maybe she’s got a shock cut in
her. Maybe. Leader gets up and walks away through the corn.
He eventually comes upon a dog, who looks like a cross between a German Shepard
and a Greyhound. The dog growls at
him, he whistles at it, while trying to reach his gun. However, he apparently sucks at both music and weaponry
and the dog attacks his arm. He
gets up and runs away, and as he dashes through the corn, we get some quick
shots of the dog, who now looks very different…still a dog shape, but it has a
humanoid face with the hollow eyes and needle teeth of the other demons we’ve
seen throughout this endeavor.
Finally, he reaches the edge of the field and stops, stunned.
Just as a Confederate soldier takes aim and shoots him straight through
the heart. Leader collapses
back against the corn, and we fade to white.
Fade in on the soldiers looking over what they’ve just killed…a
pale-skinned, hollow-eyed, needle-toothed humanoid (though also kind of
dog-shaped). They wonder
about this thing a bit, until the leader says they need to get a move on (not
before we see that the thing is still breathing, though).
Two of the Confederates are assigned to check out the house, but they’re told
to be back before nightfall. One
of the soldiers notes the gold coins near the creature’s body, and the other
notes it as well. Both of
them start thinking about whether or not there might be more gold there in the
cornfields. They carefully
step over the creature and go toward the house, while the rest of the soldiers
continue on. As we leave the
creature, we see that it has rather dog-like front hands.
I’m supposing that this is Leader, transformed into a demon-dog-thing (you may
recall that some dusty footprints also changed from human to animal in
mid-path). So, when we saw
him running through the fields earlier, and that was intercut with the demon-dog
also running through the fields, was that actually him?
Showing how he thought he looked and how he actually looked?
Well, the movie doesn’t answer this, leaving it to discussion groups and
extra-credit reports, and the soldiers continue into the corn field.
”Johnson,” says the first soldier, apparently coming across Annabelle.
“Here’s another one.” (Which
perhaps is another perception thing.
She looked like her throat was slashed, perhaps that was how Leader
killed her, he only thought he saw a bullethole.)
”Another one?”
”Um, hm,” the first says. “Damn, he’s ugly.”
They walk further in as the camera pulls back, and we get the credits.
Leader was played by Henry Thomas, probably best known for being Elliot in “E.T.”
Wounded was Patrick Fugit. Black
Guy was Isaiah Washington, also a co-producer.
Jeffrey Hollister played “Jeffy Hollister” who got everyone into all
this trouble, but I don’t remember him…unless he was the boy ghost.
“Father” and “Girl Ghost” are both credited, so it could be.
Fat Guy was Mark Boone Junior, Annabelle was Nicki Aycox, Mr. Mean was
Michael Shannon. Well, heck,
further on down we have “Boy Ghost” essayed by Steve Green, and after that
we have “Dead Boy” played by Evan Hipps.
And further down that we have Terry Jones playing “Weeping Mother”
but I think it is not the Terry Jones that you and I know best.
You know, the one from Monty Python.
Right?
Black Guy’s stunt double gets a credit.
Too bad I was too slow to write it down, but he did.
In the music credits, composer Peter Lopez played the trombone, while the
“June Synthesist” was director Alex Turner himself.
By the way, none of those “f”s for “s”s stuff here in the end
credits. Visual effects by
“Difarm” and “Girl Studio.” Man, I want to work for Girl Studio. That is a great name for anything, let alone a visual effects
house.
Apparently this was filmed in and around Mobile, Alabama.
Now, as promised, here are some notes I wrote around the twenty minute mark.
Much of this is flat-out wrong, as it happens, but I liked it so I’m
keeping it anyway. Heck, if Mr.
Alex Turner can delay the demons for nearly half the running time, I can do
whatever I want, too. [In keeping
with my tradition of making snarky little comments throughout the movie, I will
make snarky little comments throughout my theorizing, noted by the use of these
brackets.]
___________________________
Let’s pause a moment here. We’re
twenty minutes in, and I am starting to get this overwhelming feeling of déjà
vu. The group of people who are
pretty indistinguishable from each other…the fact that these people are bad
people…one of them is wounded, as well…the isolated location…the
overwhelming use of atmosphere….
My God. It’s
The
Bunker, all over again. [As
it turns out, not quite.] You might
recall from that review that we had a group of soldiers pinned down in an
abandoned bunker with an extensive tunnel system. You might also recall, if you read the review, that
pretty much nothing happened for most of the length of the movie other than
people spooked themselves and got lost, and there was some arguing and some
elliptical discussions, all overlaid by a ton of (admittedly great) atmosphere.
Those soldiers, you’ll recall, were Nazis, so it was pretty difficult
for me to work up a whole lot of sympathy for their fates—these are the folks
who were shooting at our grandfathers and putting Jews in death camps.
The one factor in their favor was that we never saw these soldiers kill
anyone (until the final twist).
Here, we have some ruthless and bloodthirsty bankrobbers.
We’ve already seen them kill innocent people, including (and this
shouldn’t need emphasis but it will get it anyway) a little boy.
Just to ram that home, we saw the boy’s mother agonizing over his body
for rather longer than we needed to get the point.
Speaking of points, mine is this: I
could cut Jason Flemyng and Bald Captain and the others in The Bunker some
slack, because they weren’t shown killing Allied soldiers, they were just
shown to be tired, desperate men at the end of their ropes and on the run from
the advancing good guys (let’s face it).
So, when they were facing the stresses being in the tunnels, I could empathize
if not sympathize. I
had no particular stake in any of them escaping, because I knew they’d go back
to shooting at Americans, but that was a pretty abstract future, just as their
past actions were also abstract. As
characters in a situation, I could see their predicament.
Their abstract past and future (killing Allied soldiers) were kept at
arm’s length so that I could place myself in their current situation for the
drama to work.
Here, in Dead Birds, I keep seeing the bank robbers shoot that little
kid. That’s an event that
has already transpired, and the distraught mother made sure we noted and filed
it away. I ought to point out
that Leader Guy seemed slightly taken aback at the child’s death, but no one
else seemed to think anything of it [future note:
this taken-aback-ness was ironic, considering Leader was the shooter].
All in a day’s work, I suppose.
Now, given the emphasis placed on that kid’s death, here’s the question:
do you think I’m pulling for any of these people to make it out of the
house alive? Is there anyone
here I’m looking at and saying, “Oh, you’ve got to keep trying to escape!
You’ve got to try some more ideas so you can survive!”?
No, I feat it’s more, “Bring it on, Dead Birds.”
Which is a shame, as it’s clear that director Alex Turner is a very talented
man. The atmosphere, shots, camera
motion and set-ups are all first-rate here.
Why do talented people shoot themselves in the foot by making movies
about unlikable people, and asking us to care about them?
Because, and let’s be honest here, I imagine Leader Guy is going to be
the only survivor, the other robbers have essentially doomed themselves.
[I was sure wrong about that.] In
other words, we know the ending already.
What are we supposed to do now?
Just watch film unspool? Because
that’s what it is, if you know the characters are doomed and you don’t like
them anyway, and (furthermore) it’s difficult to tell a lot of them apart.
Movies aren’t just actors saying lines while a camera records them.
They’re supposed to tell stories and generate feelings in an audience
by presenting characters who have understandable goals and who work to achieve
them. More importantly, to work as drama, the audience has to
be able to invest themselves in the character’s goals. In other words, we have to be able to watch and see
something of ourselves in what’s on the screen.
When, um, so-and-so wins the skating championship after overcoming
various obstacles, I should feel as if that’s my triumph as well.
I’m not sure what kind of audience would cheer on a bunch of folks who
murdered an innocent boy, and hope those same folks escape from a house of
death. Sociopaths, I suppose.
But do they even go to movies? If
you’ve seen Blue Velvet, were you watching the finale and thinking, “Gosh, I
hope Frank gets away!”?
________________________
Well, as noted, most of that is wrong though I think it’s pretty well stated.
It’s just not relevant to this movie, which I am happy to say, finally
did give us a horror movie and gave us a pretty good one.
I still think it’s a shame that Mr. Turner chose to scare us by
shock-cuts. One of
those is understandable. Two
is pushing it. More than that
and it just becomes tedious, and it makes me think the film-makers have no
confidence in their menace. Anything
can be scary in a shock-cut, a clown, Ed McMahon, a smiley-face button, a
hundred-dollar bill. All you
gotta do is synch it up with a soundtrack blare and everyone will jump.
Other than that, this is a really good horror movie. The acting was nice and low-key (though a bit mumbly),
the make-up effects were very good (particularly the cellar-scene—I’d still
love to know what that was), and the camera work and direction were terrific.
The sound guy and the composer also deserve praise for piling on the
atmosphere. Naturally, I have
some more caveats, but honestly, I liked this one.
My next caveat has to do with the bank robbers. Why were they bank robbers?
It made them bad people who didn’t trust each other, and thus,
monster-fodder we didn’t have to care about.
But it tends to be more frightening when you can empathize with people,
when, as noted, you feel you have an emotional stake in them getting away from
the monster. Seeing them
shoot up innocent people, we knew they were going to get theirs, but as noted
earlier, that really makes the movie kind of an academic exercise.
And really, they could have been people lost in the woods who came upon this
house, and found the gold already in it.
They could be innocents corrupted by the gold. That would add an air of tragedy to this.
Finally, I’m kind of confused about what’s really going on here.
What we have is, as noted a while ago, The Evil Dead in the
1860’s. But there’s one
crucial difference. The
teenagers in that film unleashed the demons by being stupid—they played the
tape with the chant on it. They
have only themselves to blame, really. The
bank robbers did nothing of the kind—the demons were already out and about
when they arrived, and they didn’t have to be awakened by chanting, or
pentagrams, or even bad behavior or infighting (or those perennial faves, sex
and drugs). Anybody
showing up would have got the same treatment. Yes,
there’s some kind of family connection (barely hinted at) and Annabelle
shouts, “It’s a trap!” but what kind of a trap?
Let’s say that the hinted-at family connection was there all along, and
Patriarch lured these folks here because he knew they’d come, so that the
demons could kill them, or transform them.
(This begs another question. How
was this visit arranged? “Hey,
next time you rob a bank and need a place to hide…”) What exactly was his goal?
Was he hoping sacrificing these people would bring his wife back?
He already told Wounded that “they tricked me” so I don’t know why
he’d trust them a second time.
No, I think the problem here is that, like the makers of The Evil Dead,
the film-makers didn’t really think an understandable motivation was something
they needed. Hey, we’ll
have a bunch of people show up and get killed, and then the movie’s over.
As I said, I liked this film, I just wish the film-makers had taken some more
care and made it more involving for the viewer (by which I mean me).
With some care and thought, it could have been outstanding.
It’s still good, and it’s still worth seeing.
Why was it called Dead Birds, though?
It’s not a bad title, it’s evocative and everything, but it doesn’t
really seem to fit anything (other than that one guy stepping on a dead bird).
Still, the title is pretty cool. I
was just asking.