Review of Dead Birds (2005) by Ryan D — 21 Mar 2005

Boy, it's been a long while since I've seen a piece of cinema as superfluous as [i][b][size=3]The Ring Two[/size][/b][/i]. In the first film, a haunted videotape kills people a week after they watch it. Turns out, some little girl named Samara has haunted the tape because she got shoved down a well and died. With [i]The Ring[/i], the plot was secondary to the scares. Samara's anger is explained, but she needs no motive; she just needs to scare people, and in the original film, she does.

With [i]The Ring Two[/i], so much time is devoted to establishing the "rules" surrounding Samara's appearances that not much time is left for scares. Apparently, Samara can't hear people talk when they're [i]sleeping [/i](whatever), and she likes to possess deer. At one point she possesses the creepy, vacuous kid from the first film, and it seems that all she wants is a body to fill. But then Naomi Watts says that all she wants is a mother. I'm not sure what Samara wants, or what powers she does or does not possess. In the end, the audience is left with hours filled with tedius exposition, but no real scares. [i]The Ring Two[/i] is up there alongside [i]Darkness[/i] as one of the most useless horror films of the past year, which is sad, because there hasn't exactly been a shortage of worthless horror films.

I also watched [i]Dead Birds[/i], which is a recent Henry Thomas straight-to-video horror film about a couple of civil war soldiers who stay in a haunted house. It just came out on DVD last week, and a female friend watched it with me. It was our third date and we watched it after returning from The [i]Ring 2[/i]. We ended up making out and then before we knew it the movie was over. Some parts of it seemed cool, so we started it over, but then we ended up making out again. So maybe I'll try it again tonight. I have to say, though, from what little bit I saw, [i]Dead Birds[/i] is an awesome movie, and even better the second time.