The Birds Reviews
Diana Tuova Spotlight on Film
The Birds represents one of Hitchcock’s most admirable accomplishments.
Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 9, 2024
Don Shanahan Every Movie Has a Lesson
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.
Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 16, 2024
June Butler Film Ireland Magazine
Both moving and unique. A masterful touch to one of the greatest film classics of all time...
Full Review | Jan 22, 2024
Danielle Solzman Solzy at the Movies
After watching The Birds, audiences will never look at birds in the same way ever again, which is perhaps Hitchcock's original intent.
Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Mar 28, 2023
Sebastian Zavala Kahn Me gusta el cine
It generates a palpable response in the viewer, through truly tense sequences, and a good handling of suspense. Full review in Spanish.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 26, 2023
Stephanie Archer Film Inquiry
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.
Full Review | Oct 29, 2022
Dennis Harvey 48 Hills
The Birds remains a brilliant demonstration of schematic-yet-riveting visual storytelling, the kind you can tell was extensively storyboarded in advance.
Full Review | Aug 26, 2022
Keith Garlington
“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.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 19, 2022
Brendan Gill New Yorker
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.
Full Review | Aug 15, 2022
Wendy Ide Times (UK)
There’s a fair amount of beak-based eye trauma.
Full Review | Aug 1, 2022
Michael Calleri Niagara Gazette
Suzanne Pleshette, as forlorn school teacher Annie Hayworth, shines. Jessica Tandy is perfect as Mitch's brittle, suspicious mother.
Full Review | Nov 11, 2020
Mike Massie Gone With The Twins
Riddled with alarming moments - primarily from wandering down dark hallways alone, but also from sitting in silence waiting for the next inevitable avian ambush.
Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Aug 24, 2020
PJ Nabarro Patrick Nabarro
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.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 13, 2019
Clyde Gilmour Maclean's Magazine
Hitchcock takes a long time to get his mood established, but the terror really chills the blood before the perplexing finale.
Full Review | Oct 7, 2019
Dwight MacDonald Esquire Magazine
The only characters in the film who aren't birdbrains are the birds.
Full Review | Aug 12, 2019
James Powers Hollywood Reporter
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 ...
Full Review | Mar 28, 2017
Alastair Sooke Daily Telegraph (UK)
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.
Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 29, 2015
Moira Walsh America Magazine
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.
Full Review | Jul 29, 2015
David Keyes Cinemaphile.org
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.
Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 21, 2015
Matt Glasby Total Film
Though it lacks the psychological depth of Hitchcock's greatest works, it's characterised by a nightmarish simplicity.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 6, 2013