A below-average Hitchcock film

Rating: 3/10 (12 January 2019)

After watching several Hitchcock films, I've noticed four things that are common in his films:
1. A plot that is, at minimum, above average. This movie does have an interesting plot that makes you curious to see what comes next, even though it's never quite gripping.
2. Words are required to move the plot, but delivery doesn't matter at all. In some of Hitchcock's best-known films, some of the actors give good or decent performances despite Hitchcock's lack of care. However, The Birds is not one of those movies. This film probably has the worst acting out of all the Hitchcock movies that I've seen.
3. Similar to the acting, character development is also not important; the only thing that matters is what the characters are currently doing on screen. This movie is actually an exception to this. At least four of the characters are given interesting backgrounds and characters.
4. The film contains several visually interesting shots. Plot and cinematography appear to be all that Hitchcock cares about, although this movie is also an exception to that. I understand the outdated technology for overlaying the birds on the screen was cutting edge at the time, so I can't fault him for that despite that it clearly can't hold up to today's animation abilities. Though I can fault him for the many uses of fake backgrounds when the film was shot on location with plenty of real backgrounds to use. Both of these issues clearly date the movie, but even after putting these scenes aside, there are simply no scenes that are extremely visually interesting like there are in Hitchcock's other hits.
One last item of note is the sound. The lack of background music worked quite well in providing anticipatory tension during the calm scenes between attacks. On the contrary, it was a terrible decision to use the tape reel noises as bird calls. They sounded nothing like birds and they only served to distract the viewer and remove the tension from the attack scenes.