Sometimes it seems like too much work to guess what a film is about from its title. Killing Birds, released in 1988, is one of those movies. Most people would think that it would be a picture that features birds in some manner, either doing a lot of killing or someone killing a lot of birds, or even a movie that refers to young women being murdered in some way. To be fair, one young woman is killed right off the bat and a couple more follow her later on in the second half, but this film is not about birds, whether literally or symbolically.

It all starts out like a slasher, as a young man comes home from serving his country, only to find his wife in bed with another man. Cue up a bit of rage and a handy knife, which equals a slit throat for the man, a knife to the brain for dad and a little stabbing for mom. As for his wife, she does not make it to the next day, and for his effort, the soldier gets his eyes pecked out by the birds that happen to inhabit his porch. Many years later, a bunch of students head out to the soldier’s house, the man now old and blind, as played by Robert Vaughn, as he is an expert on birds and they need his help so that they might pass their class. While searching for a rare woodpecker, they run into trouble with wayward zombies looking for teens to kill. As for the birds, one or two fly around, but they have nothing to do with the film. This movie is about zombies and some teens who know absolutely nothing about survival.

While somewhat compelling, this picture ends up being a difficult watch, first because the pacing is just above glacial and second because the story makes little sense. That lack of sense is exactly why you keep watching: you assume something in the movie will explain why it went from slasher to walking cadaver-fest, and yet it does not. No reason is given for the zombies’ presence, though they kill because they can sense fear, as Vaughn’s character explains during the last act. As for the students, perhaps it was a good thing nearly all of them got killed off, as they seemed to lack intelligence, especially given that they were going to school. Their actions throughout the last half of the film defy explanation, as there were times they just let their friends die in the most horrible of manners and at others, walked off on their own to meet their maker. Silliness for sure, and more than ridiculous sometimes, which also weakened the story.

The special effects, at the very least, were decent: the zombies did not look all that bad, and the cinematography wasn’t too shabby either. At times, the claustrophobia helped the film’s atmosphere, but there was little to be scared of, as it spent more time waiting for something to happen than actually doing anything. With such a poor script, nonsensical story, and little in the way of plot, there is not much to hold it all together, but there is something. It is too bad that the makers of this feature could not have made more use of Vaughn, made him more of a killer or something. It would have been a far more interesting picture if they had.

2 out of 5