A brilliant technical exercise, but not that compelling a story

Rating: 7/10 (8 May 2020)

I consider THE BIRDS to be the start of Hitchcock's late career slump. All his post-PSYCHO films just seem to lack the same amount of passion and intrigue of his earlier work. THE BIRDS is by far the best of the bunch I have seen (I've yet to see TOPAZ or FAMILY PLOT), but for all its brilliant thriller set-pieces and occasions of striking horror imagery, it always leaves me cold. I just don't care about the characters, who tend to strike me as annoying or underdeveloped compared to Hitchcock's classics. The effects show their age too, making the bird attacks seem a bit silly at times. However, the ending is wonderful, about as apocalyptic as Hitchcock ever got.