A frustratingly slow build that could provide grist for a 'Mystery Science Theater 3000' episode. However, once Hitchcock shows his hand, 'The Birds' turns into maybe the most terrifying entry in his filmography.

| Jan 8, 2025

The Birds represents one of Hitchcock’s most admirable accomplishments.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 9, 2024

When you put, essentially, a creature feature like The Birds in the hands of someone as brilliant as Alfred Hitchcock, you're not getting a cheesy B-movie. Instead, you're getting quality ratcheted suspense that exudes creativity.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 16, 2024

Both moving and unique. A masterful touch to one of the greatest film classics of all time...

| Jan 22, 2024

After watching The Birds, audiences will never look at birds in the same way ever again, which is perhaps Hitchcock's original intent.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Mar 28, 2023

It generates a palpable response in the viewer, through truly tense sequences, and a good handling of suspense. Full review in Spanish.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 26, 2023

While The Birds may lack the endurance of time in its visual effects, it endures as a classic horror that goes beyond just nature’s revenge set to rebalance the world around us.

| Oct 29, 2022

The Birds remains a brilliant demonstration of schematic-yet-riveting visual storytelling, the kind you can tell was extensively storyboarded in advance.

| Aug 26, 2022

“The Birds” remains a wonderful experience. It takes a somewhat wacky concept and brilliantly creates a society turned on its head by the unlikeliest of terrors.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 19, 2022

Hard as it may be to believe of a Hitchcock, it doesn’t arouse suspense, which is, of course, what justifies and transforms the sadism that lies at the heart of every thriller. Here the sadism is all too nakedly, repellently present.

| Aug 15, 2022

There’s a fair amount of beak-based eye trauma.

| Aug 1, 2022

Suzanne Pleshette, as forlorn school teacher Annie Hayworth, shines. Jessica Tandy is perfect as Mitch's brittle, suspicious mother.

| Nov 11, 2020

Riddled with alarming moments - primarily from wandering down dark hallways alone, but also from sitting in silence waiting for the next inevitable avian ambush.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Aug 24, 2020

Hitchcock at his best, wrapping up in his somewhat hokum narrative a clever essay on belated maturation and another of his wonderful cinematic discourses on time and space.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 13, 2019

Hitchcock takes a long time to get his mood established, but the terror really chills the blood before the perplexing finale.

| Oct 7, 2019

The only characters in the film who aren't birdbrains are the birds.

| Aug 12, 2019

Hitchcock prolongs his prelude to horror for more than half the film, playing with audience suspense with comedy and romance while he sets his stage. The horror when it comes is a hair-raiser ...

| Mar 28, 2017

The true genius of the film, based on a 1952 short story by Daphne du Maurier, is the way Hitchcock makes the malevolent birds seem like manifestations of his characters' mental unease.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 29, 2015

The picture pursues these false clues with excessive long-windedness and occasional fatuity. It is a tribute to Hitchcock's mastery of his craft that, even so, he makes overpoweringly real the menace of the birds.

| Jul 29, 2015

In the thick of an impeccable narrative that pays deep attention to all those involved, the great filmmaker manages to reach far inside the psychological chasm and find a rich inspiration.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 21, 2015