Dead Birds (2004 film)
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| Dead Birds | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Alex Turner |
| Produced by | David Hillary Timothy Peternel Ash Shah |
| Written by | Simon Barrett |
| Starring | Henry Thomas Nicki Aycox Isaiah Washington Patrick Fugit Michael Shannon |
| Music by | Peter Lopez |
| Distributed by | Sony Pictures |
| Release date(s) | March 15, 2005 (Direct-to-video) |
| Running time | 91 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | Unknown |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Dead Birds is a 2004 American horror film.
[edit] Synopsis
Dead Birds is a movie about a handful of thieves who discover that they have more to worry about than the law in this independent horror story, set during the American Civil War. William (Henry Thomas) is the leader of a group of runaway Confederate soldiers who, with the help of Tom, an escaped slave and Annabelle, an Army nurse (Nicki Aycox), stage a daring robbery at a bank holding a cache of rebel gold. The heist does not go smoothly, and William's associates soon fall into in-fighting as they head toward Mexico with their stolen fortune. Needing a place to rest for the night, the criminals set up camp in a mansion overlooking an abandoned plantation, but it soon becomes obvious that the old house is not as empty as they thought, as a handful of otherworldly horrors make their presence known while William and his cohorts fight over the gold. Also featuring Isaiah Washington, Pat Beatty, Patrick Fugit, and Michael Shannon, Dead Birds was the first feature film from director Alex Turner.
[edit] Plot
A group of Confederate soldiers are depositing a large amount of Confederate gold in a smalltown Alabama bank. As they are doing this a second, ragtag looking bunch of Confederates ride into town. They stop at the bank where they are questioned by two guards from the original group who aim their rifles and warn them to stay out of the bank for a few minutes as the gold is safely deposited.
Todd (Isaiah Washington) sneaks up behind the two guards and cuts their throats. The gang enters the bank and a bloodbath ensues. One of the female customers in the bank is actually Annabelle (Nicki Aycox), one of the gang members in disguise. The gang grab the gold and head out of town, getting shot at by more soldiers on the way. Sam (Patrick Fugit) is hit in the shoulder while William (Henry Thomas) accidentally shoots and kills a young boy.
They are looking for a house that William knows of, and ride for hours. They pass a couple of men stripping valuables from a bunch of executed Confederate deserters. Finally William locates a large house surrounded by cornfields.
They start leading their horses through the cornfield and come across a scarecrow that looks like a man with a sack on his head. Annabelle is spooked but they keep going. Suddenly, a horrible creature comes running by them through the corn; Sam shoots it dead. It looks like no animal known to man; Joseph (Mark Boone Junior) says it's a wild boar with its skin shaved off.
They get to the house, a sprawling, balconied Southern mansion. Sam notices a dead bird on the ground with what seems to be a look of terror on its face.
They go into the house and light lanterns. Annabelle tends to Sam's wound as the rest explore the property. Clyde (Michael Shannon) and Joseph go upstairs; they discuss how they should get a bigger share of the gold than Todd as he is a runaway slave. They fleetingly plot about taking the gold for themselves.
Joseph thinks he sees something under a bed in one of the rooms. Todd is trying to get a basement door open but it is locked. Strange noises come from within. William checks the barn and finds a strange book filled with disturbing diagrams and pictures of human dissection. He says the book contains black magic spells.
As a storm moves in, the men are playing poker and drinking. William and Annabelle go upstairs to have sex. Afterwards, William briefly laments killing the little boy from town.
Joseph goes out to tend to the horses and put them up in the barn. He goes to get some water from a nearby well, when he hears a child screaming from down inside. He drops the bucket, tells the child to grab on and starts pulling the bucket back up. A white hand grabs him and pulls him into the well.
Soon, it is apparent Joseph is missing and William, Sam, Todd and Clyde all go out into a search party to find him. In the end, Joseph does not turn up and they head back inside, Clyde using the outhouse first.
From here on in, everyone starts to hear and see strange things. Annabelle hears something from under her bed; when she goes to check, a little boy with black pit eyes and an alongate face pops out and frightens her. William comes to her aide while Sam, suffering from the wound's infection, lays down to rest.
Clyde has a weird experience at the outhouse before returning. He goes upstairs to rest in what appears to be the former children's bedroom before, thinking he's spotted Joseph lumbering outside the bedroom window, runs back out to find him.
Sam is visited by a little boy briefly before an older man who demands where his wife is appears, weilding a cleaver. Later, Sam finds a little girl crying in the corner of the room and goes to help her, before she turns and makes the same mutated face as the boy Annabelle saw did.
Todd, napping by the pile of gold, is awakened by noises from below and discovers the basement door, that which was jammed shut from earlier, is now open. Todd goes down and finds all sorts of medical instruments and torture devices. A female slave appears chained to the floor, and whilst begging for help it seems as though an invisible force slices open her belly and pulls out her entrails.
William comes down from his room to discover the gold is gone. Believing it was stolen by Joseph and Clyde, he goes out to find them. Sam emerges and William orders him to stay with Annabelle.
While alone, Sam reveals to be possessed by the man he had an encounter with while resting. Annabelle checks his wound, which is severely infected, before she suffers a rapidfire vision of what happened in this house. The owner sacrificed all his slaves trying to bring back his dead wife, using the strange book William had found. When he ran out of slaves he used his own children, torturing them in horrible ways before they died. He was caught by the locals and turned into a living scarecrow in the cornfield to suffer, a sack placed over his head.
He tells Annabelle, through Sam, the dead were taken over by demons and are all around her. Sam collapses and is apparently dead.
William, Todd and Annabelle reunite. Both Todd and Annabelle explain what they saw to William, who refuses to leave without the gold. However, when Todd starts hearing noises, they head outside to the barn where the horses are kept.
The horses have all been torn apart, and Todd starts having visions of the demons. Unable to stay any longer, he abandons William and Annabelle. William still refuses to leave without the gold and Annabelle stays by his side. Back in the house, they are shocked to see Sam's body is gone.
As Todd makes his escape through the cornfield, one of the mutated demons appears and screams in his face. This causes Todd to mysteriously vanish out of thin air.
Annabelle believes they were sent here as a trap. Finally, William agrees they should leave.
They come across the scarecrow again in the cornfield, only it is groaning and wriggling on its post. William cuts it down and removes the sack from the head: it is Clyde, his mouth and eyes sewn shut (akin to the doll he found in the children's room.) William goes to cut his mouth open but he lurches forward, scaring them, and Annabelle kicks off Clyde's head.
William and Annabelle run and get separated. It appears something is chasing them both. Annabelle runs to William, who accidentally mistakens her for a demon and shoots her dead. There he stays by her side until morning.
When the sun rises, William is attacked by a dog, and starts to run for his life. As he exits the cornfield he is shot in the chest by a Confederate soldier; a whole platoon is passing by on the road.
We then see William from the soldiers point of view: he is one of the 'skinned wild boar' creatures/demons now.
The soldier who shot William/The Demon volunteers to go and check the house with his buddy. The reason becomes clear when he picks up two gold coins from next to the body. As the soldiers head for the old mansion, they comment on another demon body, possibly that of Annabelle's. The film ends with the soldiers disappearing out of sight.
