Thoughts on 'Dead Birds'

Okay so this movie could have been better, but it wasn't terrible. It really made me think of Lovecraft's "Lurking Fear", not quite the same but a similar idea, with the people becoming the creatures that everyone fears so much. Although it's not billed with any mention of Lovecraft, I wouldn't be shocked if the writers of this film (and director) were familiar with his work. It shares many of the same elements, like questioning what you're seeing, whether it's happening; lack of judgment on the part of the people involved opening up gateways to eldritch horrors; remote locations and old history, the slow descent into insanity, etc..

What I really liked was the transition at the end, where William became the creature. Whether or not he had been one of them from the start, whether any of what we saw actually happened, or if we were only reliving their memories of the events, there's really no way to be sure. We can speculate, but without full disclosure there's no certainty. And I enjoyed that. From what I'm seeing on these forums it appears a lot of people missed the comments by the soldiers at the end, after they step into the field, past William's body. "Here's another one." Was that Annabelle's body? I believe it was, and that gives us more to think about. Maybe they were ALL transformed by the end. Maybe they were possessed from the moment they stepped into that field, and we were only seeing them as they saw themselves.

My question is Todd. He was very sharp about what was happening, right from the start, and unlike everyone else (but Annabelle, who probably would have succumbed to the forces of the house as she was already showing signs of a breakdown) Todd didn't actually get "caught" by the demons. He was simply destroyed. Was he immune to it? I wonder if there was something about him that made him able to see what had occurred in that house without prompting like Annabelle needed, which also made it impossible to turn him. I'd love to talk to the writers about these characters. I feel like a lot of time that was spent dealing with meaningless setup far past the point where it was necessary could have been better spent analyzing the motivations and backgrounds of the characters.

With so many slasher flicks and gimmicks masquerading as horror, it was nice to see something that came a little closer to the actual definition of the genre. This made me think about what was happening, instead of showing every part of it. I don't need to see where the kids were "hidden" because the fact that he did away with them was enough. Show, don't tell.