You'll never look at birds the same way again.

Rating: 8/10 (18 May 2010)

In 2008's The Happening, M. Knight Shyamalan failed spectacularly to do what Alfred Hitchcock did way back in 1963. Make a great movie about what would happen if one of the most benign and least threatening aspects of nature, suddenly, inexplicably, and fatally turned against humanity.
While Shymalan tried to horrify us with the wind and plant pollen, Hitchcock decides to remind us of how many more birds there are than humans, and how sharp beaks are just as capable of plucking out eyes and stabbing flesh as they are at pecking seeds. If you scoff at the idea of birds being deadly...well, imagine yourself in any of the various terrifying and menacing situations that these characters face throughout The Birds. The last 15 minutes are as tense as almost anything I've ever seen in movie
The ordinary and frivolous opening of the story is a perfect segue into the unexpected horror that descends on the small coastal town of Bodega Bay. There's a slow, menacing buildup to the action, and it definitely serves to lull you into an easy calm that shatters all the harder once the feathers start flying. And we never know why. Great movie.