1.
The reason why the choice of characters makes people feel terrifying is to choose the bird as the enemy first. The strange calls of birds (unable to communicate), feathers (alien appearance), flying (invincible), all these qualities contrary to humans make this setting full of otherness effects, that is, humans are violated by the unknown, and the unknown cannot. Victory, inability to grasp, but also revealing potential dangers, the unknown is the source of all terror, in addition to the unique image of the bird itself, in the film, the unknown of the bird is also reflected in two aspects:
1. From the beginning of the film At the end, there is not a single shot or line that tells us why birds attack humans, and why they are suddenly organized and intelligent. There is no reason behind the attacks of birds, which makes birds have a sense of aggression and power. Just imagine. The thriller movies that the audience sees on weekdays, whether it is a mutant monster or a perverted killer, all have explanations and foreshadowing about the murder, the unprovoked murder of birds-this action itself is scary enough.
2. There is often a weakness behind the explanation of motivation: mutant monsters are afraid of a certain chemical element, pervert killer has a distorted childhood memory, Godzilla is afraid that his offspring will be threatened, and the weakness of the bird in this film is unknown , the unknown makes the characters in the film unable to defeat this enemy, and the horror brought by the sense of powerlessness is self-evident (such as "Eden Lake"), and the final outcome is not so much escape as it is more skillful Hunters give toy prey a temporary lifeline before they die.
2.
I don't know if the sound is unintentional or not. When the hero's mother discovered the subjective scene of the deceased, the choice of silence and the silence of multiple horror scenes were not less frightening than we imagined, but were unique. People are even more nervous. The only scream in this film comes from the scene where the heroine finds the female professor dead after the birds have launched an attack in the second half of the movie (the enemy's attributes are clear). Does not appear obtrusive.
The scene in contrast to the previous sound saving form, that is, the first large-scale attack on the lakeside villa, used a large number of bird and variation sounds that were never used in the first half of the movie, with high loudness (power) and high density (quantity). The tone is messy and weird (unknown), which is very scary in itself. Compared with the quieter first half of the movie, it makes people feel cold behind their backs.
After an impressive climax of the attack, the film returns to a depressing silence at the end: the protagonist and his party dare not make a sound and run away quietly under the watchful eyes of the birds. Accurate selection of suppressed silence and terrifying dense sound is one of the important elements in creating the horror mood of the film.
3. Plot
Compared with the warm and safe rhythm of ordinary horror movies → the sudden and dangerous rhythm, the characters of the birds have a mysterious Gothic element: the heroine and the hero are on good terms, and they live alone at night in the house of a rival who pretends not to care about the love history. , The protagonist who is not perfect and brave, but has an Oedipus tendency, the old woman who speaks incomprehensibly, and whose emotional behavior is hysterical, compared with the victims who appear in the beginning of ordinary horror movies whose families are harmonious, safe and happy, these pave the way for the story. None of the characters appearing in the stage makes people feel safe or stable, especially the scene where the heroine who occupies a large space sneaks into the hero's home, which clearly creates an atmosphere of human potential danger, making the audience feel that the bird is just a danger signal. , it needs to be pointed out that until the birds attacked on a large scale in the town center, every scene of human-to-human communication had nothing to do with birds but always ended with questions about the relationship between the characters: the first time the hero's mother in the restaurant Seeing the heroine, it ends with her mother's doubtful and fearful eyes; on the night when the heroine stayed at the house of the female teacher who revealed her jealousy, the female teacher's jealousy was fully brewed but did not break out, and the scene ended with a bird hitting the door—— Leaving the female teacher's jealous thread unresolved. These all make people feel that the danger is related to the person, and the birds are just danger signs. Subsequent episodes reinforce this point, as the hero's mother's frightened loss of voice after discovering the deceased farmer not only matches the repressed silence of the scene, but also makes people feel that there is someone playing tricks behind it, even until the flock of birds. A massive attack in the center of a small town still has the chance to make birds a danger rather than a subject - the overly terrified woman in the restaurant accuses the heroine of being the devil that brought it all, which makes viewers wonder if the danger will turn to be caused by terror Suspected harm between people, until the male protagonist made a clear action to repair the house to defend against the flock of birds, the flock of birds was officially regarded as the subject of danger, at this time, the film has less than one-sixth left. As a dangerous subject, the flock of birds is not only mysterious and unknown in the temperament of the characters themselves, but also hidden in the dark in the plot, which makes people feel unexpected when they appear.
4.
In the film, the American countryside is shown with a large perspective. The colors of the picture are mostly dark green and navy blue, which all reflect the bleakness and danger of the American Gothic atmosphere of the famous oil painting.
Turn a bird that is very common in everyday life into the protagonist of a horror movie. In the final escape scene, although the audience's common sense allows them to know that those birds will not attack humans, they can't help but watch with horror. The horror in it Charm is the best example of Hitchcock's genius.
PS. The only flaw in this film is that the (unavoidable) technical conditions cause the scenes to be inactive, such as the bird doll on the telephone pole, the not so scary wounding scene, and when the heroine is attacked by birds in the attic The cry is a little bit concealed.
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