Heard about this one some time ago. Saw it at the video store so I thought I'd check it out.

The story of Dead Birds starts off pretty simple. It's set in the Old West and starts out with a group of robbers shooting up a bank and stealing a bag of gold, killing off many innocent people in the process. Clearly these aren't the friendliest folks in the world. Anyway, after they get their hands on the gold, the robbers take refuge in an abandoned house. Then things start to get creepy as ghosts and demons start to show up.

Dead Birds is a direct-to-video flick so I was quite surprised to see that the acting wasn't half bad. The cast, which includes Alex Turner and Isaiah Washington who have starred in a couple bigger flicks, brings surprising realism to the characters. Despite the characters being considerably greedy, nasty human beings, a few of them are actually able to come off as simpathetic. This certainly enhanced the movie watching experience.

Storywise, Dead Birds starts out looking like it's brought a lot of new to the table with the Old West setting and antihero characters. Though once they get to the house, it plays off as a pretty typical ghost story, which isn't neccesarily bad. There are a few lame jump scares but for the most part, it remains genuinely creepy, atmospheric, and well paced. The film utilizes a few tired horror conventions (many of which seen in the Sixth Sense and J Horror flicks, original and remake alike) and is able to pull them off well (unlike most current mainstream movies in the same vein). There's some blood in Dead Birds as well, which gives it a little more oomf but is generally kept to a minimum.

The only disappointing part of Dead Birds is the ending. A lot of strange things start happening that don't really make a lot of sense. Like most ghost stories, there's a twist ending but although it's not the typical "they're all dead" kind of ending, it's still rather puzzling and ruins the story a tad.

All in all, Dead Birds is a decent flick. It brings some new things to the table but probably could have gone a little further with it and been ultimately more original and innovative. But for what it is, Dead Birds is worth a watch.

I saw this movie a couple months ago and I still don't get the ending, I thought it was pretty good, but I was lost near the end.  Also, I swear that kid in the movie is the same kid from almost famous, I think this is the only other movie I have seen him in.

I liked the robbery in the beginning of the movie, also if you had the "special" dvd with the deleted scenes you can see an even gorier robbery scene
Some scenes were indeed scary which I also didn't expect from a std.
-SPOILERS-
Yes the ending with them being those creatures was weird indeed, but hey they had to stop somewhere.