What’s not scarier than a horde/herd of something coming for
your flesh!! Imagine hundreds of cockroaches running up your body or millions
of rats chewing at your legs!! It works! It is a scary idea and the master of
suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock, showed that the feathery flyer of the sky
could come across as terrifying, but it does not always seem to work. Even with
a terrifying bird like the Raven.
Kaw has a great title, and when a friend told me about this
film the title was one of the biggest draws. They could have gone with “The
Ravens” or even “The Birds”, but no they did the right thing and had a bit of
fun with the title. I should have known that that is where the movie
stopped being any good!
OK, I will say that I was never bored during the film, but
about halfway through it felt a little labored. The film seemed to miss a
little something extra to keep the story from dragging. Not to say that
the plot was not any good because that is the thing that surprised me the most about the production. The story was quite interesting, silly and a bit stupid, but how often are these
types of films not a little weird in ways of plot. It’s about a group of birds
that seem to have the knowledge of a human and have a taste for flesh. I will not give
too much away just in case you decide to rent this film. What I will say is
that up to a point you can go along with birds just turning and attacking. Even to a point where they know who the weaker people to pick off are, that’s if the fact about a Raven
being as clever as a dog is true. But then how they attack the school bus near the
end of the picture, is saying that they are as clever as a human being. This
all seems a bit far fetched, especially when you find out what made them so
clever!! So if it was not the story what made the film seem labored I think
it could have been either the acting or the small silly plot holes.
The acting was
not over the top or even that wooden, it was more the fact that no real emotion
had gone into it. Take for example a scene where the ravens manage to make a
car steer off the road and crash, which should create a tense amount of fear over
the fact that birds have that power. But no, that is played down by the actors,
who decide to show they are scared but not as much as they should be. This is a
feeling pasted around by all the cast, each and every one of them not really
caring about the character they should be playing. It got to a point where I
started to forget who was alive and not care who is getting killed, at one
point I even lost the plot as to if a character was left in a vehicle alive or
dead and unless I watch the film again I will never know or even care!!
Throughout the film there seemed to be a lack of care in the
film making process. I’m not saying that the camera was out of focus or the
boom kept falling into shot, no I’m talking more of lazy props and continuity. I
didn't really start to notice this until about 20 minutes into the film, when the
police office goes to checkout a crime scene and somehow cuts his hand on the
blunt edge of the table. From then on I picked up a few other bits, like for
example that the snow seemed to be appearing and disappearing whenever it felt
like it! But the Amish were the worse culprit of them all. I first noticed the
beards, and how fake they looked, like they were hooked round the ears like
fake Santa beards. The other thing that got to me about them was the fact that
they were cross about relying on the English (meaning Americans) too much, but
they seemed happy enough to drive around in cars and wear clothes provided
by the Americans!!
I also want to put a bit of focus on the stars of the film,
the birds themselves. Ravens are pretty terrifying animals without any help but
with the added fake blood on the beaks they looked even more scary. What you
have to remember though is the golden rule of cinema “Never work with children
or animals”, and in this film you can kind of see why this comment is needed.
It must really be quite hard to control a group of massive birds and that is quite
clear in quite a few scenes in the film. Most noticeable are scenes which
include birds looking the wrong way and even at one point, a bird seems to come
on to the set to early, even turning around and leaving before coming on again!!
The biggest problem I
have with most of these monster movies/creature features is the continued use
of the same effect shots used over and over again. Two other films I can think
of (Shark Attack 3 and Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus) which do what I’m talking
about basically take the same shot of the animal or effect and use it more than
once or twice during the movie. “Kaw” is guilty of doing this a lot, mainly
with the major flocks of ravens flying at the camera and also the close up of
the ravens, which is basically a raven sat in front of a green screen, and then
the image changed to match the scene in the film. This pisses me off because it
is lazy and it is as if the film makers are trying to make a bad film!!
So as a sum up, the film is really not that bad. The ravens
are pretty scary and even more so in numbers, the actors are good and the
setting is interesting for once. But the film is filled with holes, the same
shots over and over again and the actors just seem to lose interest halfway
through! So I would not “claw” (see what I did there) to see this film again,
but I would not put people off watching it!
