So as with Psycho, one of the notable things about this movie is how much it’s not obviously about what it’s about, as it starts. Like, there’s this whole thing with the protagonist meeting up with this suspicious-acting dude who seems to know too much about her, and then she goes off to a rural village to find him and there’s all kinds of suspiciousness with his mom and another woman, and you could completely believe that this is doing some kind of suspense thriller thing about these characters and the secrets in their past.

But, of course, it’s not; all this is merely the backdrop for bird attacks. So what I’ll say about the birds is that they definitely look creepy. If you’ve ever walked past one of those trees or fences or whatever that’s covered in birds, you know how fucking weird it is, and the movie does a great job of that, with playground equipment blanketed in crows and the like.

But when it comes time to believe that they’re genuinely deadly… man, idk if I buy it. I am on record believing that almost all forms of wildlife are more deadly than you’d think, but small birds just seem very survivable. It’s probably notable that all the people murdered by birds get killed off camera, while the people who are attacked on camera end up with shallow scratches where tetanus infection is the biggest worry. There’s just no way to make it plausible that seagulls actually literally murdered someone; or rather, if there is, Hitchcock doesn’t accomplish it here.

Besides that, there’s a lot of idiot plotting needed to put the main characters in danger. Like, hmm, you hear birds coming from inside the house, so you peek open a door and see that they’ve ripped a hole in the roof. What do you do now? You fucking close that door and figure out how to barricade it a bit, right? Not if you’re the protagonist, who slips inside for no earthly reason and then closes the door behind her, and then (unconvincingly) is unable to open it again in the middle of a bird attack.

And so as the movie was going on, I was really wondering how they were going to wrap it up. Are they going to find the secret of what triggered the birds? Is it just going to end on its own and they’ve all come through this harrowing thing? Haha, no, it’s just about the main characters escaping. As the movie ends, you still have no idea why the birds attacked, and they’re still actively attacking anyone who happens to be there. I guess it’s an ending, but not a very satisfying one.

On the whole, this feels like minor Hitchcock. It doesn’t have the weird complexity of Vertigo or the layers of Psycho, it’s just a creature feature, and while it’s very well-made, there are better ones out there.