[Film Review] The Thing That Ate The Birds (2021)

“What happened?”

“You did.”

Absent husbands. Resentful wives. Hopeless marriages. Whether witnessed on screen or experienced out of shot, the dissolution of a relationship is a recurring theme endlessly explored both in film and in everyday life, shown time and time again, yet we often find ourselves flocking back to it as a form of morbid entertainment.

There is something in our subconsciousness that drives us into actively wanting to see a dramatic fallout; the arguments, the possible resolution, anything we can set our greedy eyes on and later frivolously dissect with fellow viewers. Innocently naive optimists beware: online horror platform ALTER’s recent short, The Thing That Ate The Birds (2022), quickly thrusts you back into recanting your romanticization of such toxic liaisons.  

The opening shot shows husband, Abel, at his gamekeeping job on the North Yorkshire Moors. His gruesome discovery of a mangled grouse is in stark contrast from the serene English countryside, and confirms his suspicions of a hungry brute lingering about. Abel’s troubles don’t just stop at work, however; visual cues of empty, scattered bottles of alcohol while he sleeps alone on the couch stem from a glaring issue that has been plaguing his marriage to wife, Grace, for a long time, as seen by her piercing, disapproving eyes. A sign of a positive turnaround is nowhere in sight, and Grace seems to accept their steady decline, telling her friend with a sigh, “you know what he’s like—he’ll never change.”

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Well, changes he does, and not necessarily for the better; back in the fields, Abel finally locks eyes with the culprit - a humanoid creature reminiscent of the Crawlers from The Descent, captured with brilliant prosthetic makeup - and mindlessly kills it, despite his assistant Jake warning him not to. His newfound viciousness propels him to find a new victim from there

With a fleeting 11-minute runtime, Birds stands out from the sea of interpersonal horror dramas, showing an impressive amount of versatility in gore, suspense and dread. A plucky, stringed score is one we have heard before, but complements the film well enough to reel you in, particularly when the title suddenly pops up. The technical aspects are just as strong as the directing, fronted by solid sound design and tasteful cinematography, careful to only give you a sliver of the film’s creepiness without being overindulgent. 

Writer-director duo Sophie Mair and Dan Gitsham have stated that their collaborative short is a politically-charged allegory on their anxieties surrounding the growing voices from far-right movements, as well as the spike in random acts of violence committed in the Western world over the last few years. While my initial thoughts veered (and admittedly still do) more towards commentary on the lack of help and resources for substance abusers, and the repeated cycle of domestic violence that can go along with it, rewatching Birds in the intended light brings a whole new conversation to the table, and unapologetically so. The blunt, unrelenting actions of Abel are nothing short of what we haven’t already seen, unfortunately, one too many times in reality. His blank stare at the aftermath of his created chaos further highlights the depleted sense of remorse echoed by the systematic, political turmoil fueling our broken society today. As long as those in power aren’t personally affected, why bother putting effort into change when they can get cosy and warm watching the world burn?

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