Kaw

Sheldon Wilson, a well-regarded maker of horror flicks, presents something worth attention. KAW is interesting enough. There is an outbreak of mad cow disease on a Mennonite farm. The virus is transfered to the ravens who eat the rotting cattle carcasses. The infected flock of coal black birds descend on a small town, where the outgoing sheriff(Sean Patrick Flanery)and long time local doctor(Rod Taylor)try to muster the citizens to band together in hopes of survival. A farmer/bus driver(Stephen McHattie)turns out heroic in saving the community. CGI ravens are pretty frightening and there are a few gory scenes. This film had the chance to become something stupid; but producer Gordon Yang knew the positive results of having a decent story line that taps into human anxieties of natural disaster and disease. Other cast members: Kristin Booth, John Ralston, Ashley Newbrough and Megan Park.

Any film made with rampaging birds is bound to be immediately compared with the Alfred Hitchcock classic 'The Birds', especially if it has the hero of that film, Rod Taylor, playing a cameo role. Now this was Rod's pen ultimate movie appearance at 76, and he probably only accepted it for a laugh, but he does lend it some heavyweight clout, and is the main reason I bought it on DVD. Having said that, it's light on plot, but considering the minuscule budget compared with what Hitchcock would have had, it's quite well done, of course they had the added benefit of CGI, which of course Alfred didn't. From the extras I learnt that they had 11 trained ravens to work with, plus a couple of mechanical ones, and of course the CGI effects. Unlike 'The Birds' at least there's a reason given for the birds behavior, even if implausible, and the ending is equally anti climactic, still, as I say, anything with Rod Taylor in the cast can't be all bad, and it's better than a lot of stuff being churned out!

~Spoiler~ Sheldon Wilson struck a chord with me in 2004 when he directed Shallow Ground. That was a movie that stood out from all the other DTV movies that line the shelves of your local Blockbuster. I decided that this was an up-and-comer worth following. When it was announced that he would be doing a "Sci-fi Original" as his sophomore effort, I wasn't thrilled. Then I heard the title: Kaw! My hopes were not high as it was not exactly a "kawsome" title. With a title like that, of course it was going to be a rip-off of Hitch's The Birds (only dumbed-down for the Sci-fi Channel). But I remembered how much he impressed me with that first feature. Add to that a cast that can rise above the material and you've got an enjoyable night of Sci-fi Saturday viewing. The plot centers on a small community where the sheriff is all packed up and leaving town in a matter of days (a theme in common with Shallow Ground). But he didn't expect his last days to be like this. The local raven population has gone mad for reasons I'll explain later. Before you can say "Tippi Hedren" the villainous birds descend on the town and its inhabitants. The thing that is really cool about this film, other than the fact that they use real birds for the most part, is that they cast Rod Taylor as the town's doctor. So you can make no bones about this being a rip-off of The Birds, the filmmakers gladly admit it and cast the star of that movie as a knowing homage. Sean Patrick Flanery stars as the sheriff. Here's a guy with A-list talent that seems to relegated to B and sometimes C features. Either he's happy with this, or he has Billy Zane's agent. And rounding out the cast is the Canadian Lance Henriksen: Stephen McHattie. He's as comfortable here as he is in big-budget movies like 300 and A History of Violence. There are a few things I didn't like about the movie though. I would have been happy if they didn't explain the reason for the raven's attacks. Neither Hitchcock's original or films like Night of the Living Dead give you a definitive answer. They leave the question open and have been very successful. In Kaw, a Mennonite village on the outskirts of town is responsible for the outbreak. It turns out they have an epidemic of Mad Cow Disease on their farm and neglected to tell anyone because they think God is punishing them. The birds eat the flesh of the cows...and you know what happens next. Also, the ending is really bad, not to mention clichéd to the nth degree. But that leaves it open for the sequel: Kaw II. Oh yes, there will be feathers. But wouldn't you rather see the prequel? I call it Moo! The night THE COWS came home!

Ravens, infected by Mad Cow Disease when they ate from the dead cows of an Amish-like Minnonites community farm, lead a mass revolt descending upon a snowy, small town hungry for any type of flesh that can satisfy their appetites. On the final day of his job as sheriff, Wayne(Sean Patrick Flanery)encounters a crisis that affects his whole town as huge, menacing ravens attack in packs leaving several citizens and passersby dead and their flesh torn to pieces. He must find a way to defend his people against these deadly ravens or else perish in the process. There's an army of these birds and they return in waves, always ready for human flesh. Stephen McHattie is Clyde, an alcoholic school bus driver trying to stay sober for love-interest Betty(Michelle Suquet), who runs a little gas station/diner. Kristin Booth is Wayne's photographer wife, Cynthia, for whom he's giving up his sheriff's position so she can have a career as a teacher of anthropology. Veteran Rod Taylor(the hero in Hitchcock's The Birds)stars as the town doctor/coroner. Vladimir Bondarenko is Jacob, the religiously fanatical Minnonite who blames the curse of their cows and rampaging predatory birds on the English for he feels their people joining amongst them in activities was against God's will. He is able to hold his son Oskar(John Ralston)to silence over the cows keeping the disease a secret from the town. Megan Park is Oskar's daughter Gretchen who, along with Doris(Ashley Newbrough)and Connie(Emma Knight),become trapped on a bus when the ravens attack as Clyde attempts to fix his engine while their coach Emma(Amanda Brugel)tries to assist him. I watched the R-rated version which contains some pretty gory flesh eating such as when a couple, lost on a road near the town, are under attack swerving upside down into a ditch..while the car explodes, a bird is shown tearing away at the flesh wound of a gash on the leg of the woman slung from the vehicle. After an attack on Clyde's dog, Wayne stops by the man's house finding the poor canine being fed from by a raven chewing away. Another great scene, my favorite of the film, has Cynthia stopping off by Jacob's Minnonite farm to bring a picture-book and falling into a well containing the skinned carcass of a cow! Another suspenseful scene has this poor child, off his bicycle, surrounded by a circle of ravens around him. Most of the attacks are shown from afar as birds form a massive attack covering their victims..we see their destruction afterward as nasty flesh wounds are shown on the dead victims.The ending is a bit too much, however. Has a nifty attack on the main characters as they try to survive a final major swarm upon them in Betty's diner. There's an obvious influence from Hitchcock's The Birds(I mean Rod Taylor's presence in the film assures at least that), but "Kaw" gives an explanation to the devastation that occurs by the ravens. The film is basically "The Birds" using modern movie techniques like CGI. We see birds flying towards(..and in waves around) the screen, into the sky, going into/flying out of trees, and on top of buildings. The cast is okay..not as interesting as the one in "The Birds", but they are really in "Kaw" to elicit fear and anxiety as the ravens come after them. Great to see Rod Taylor show up in this film, though. Might be of interest for fans of the "animals run amok" horror sub-genre. The ending is a bit too much, however. And, that one sequence when the ravens attack the school bus by throwing stones they gather in their claws is just ridiculous.

It's a Sci Fi Channel movie. With killer ravens that got infected from Amish mad cows. I thought it was relaxing to watch the film, expecting every bit of it to be as it was and not getting disappointed. I wasn't expecting much, though. The result was some shoddy CGI birds, a lot of scenes ripped off from The Birds, no script, nothing scary, people dying from superficial wounds and car accidents, a big explosion to save the day and a quick scare last scene. Bottom line: no reason why you should see this film. No reason why you shouldn't, either. It's the perfect zen TV movie, in perfect balance.

Kaw is a film that is ripped off outrageously from Alfred Hitchcock's classic, The Birds and from the Lou Diamond Phillips science fiction theatrical release Bats from about 10 years ago. Whereas Hitchcock set his classic film on the Northern California coast and had all kinds of the avian creatures suddenly becoming hostile, here we have ravens becoming ravenous. The scavenger birds feed on Mennonite cattle who have mad cow disease and now we've got a bunch of loony ravens flying about. This whole cast including veteran Rod Taylor who if you'll remember was the star of The Birds look pretty embarrassed by the whole thing. The only question I have is will the Hitchcock estate sue? Quoth this viewer, Nevermore.

OK, let's take a look at "Kaw." First, it is a direct descendant of Alfred Hitchcocks "Birds", which is not a bad movie to clone, but "Kaw" seemed to act as though it lost interest right after it got started. I won't rehash what my fellow reviewer wrote, but there are a couple of things that are lacking in this film. I will buy the premise of a Sheriff in a small town of around 600 wanting to leave and I will buy the idea that his last day should be the pits, but here is what I view as some drawbacks to this film. Without giving anything away, I noticed in the beginning of the film, an Amish lady delivers milk and cheese to Betty played by Michelle Duquet at what else but Betty's Diner. Now you are probably wondering about the significance of this, but once you see the end of the movie and all is explained, you will wonder about this as well. One correction I would like to make that a fellow reviewer noted is that the bus was not full of children, but contained one bus driver played by Stephen McHattie, one girls basketball coach played by Amanda Brugel, one Whitney basketball girl played by Ashley Newbrough, one Amish girl played by Megan Park and one other girl played by Renessa Blitz. By my count there were 3 girls, 1 coach, and 1 driver for a total of 5 people, which is a far cry from a "bus load of children." On the return from the basketball clinic, the bus breaks down. At one point, Doris, the Whitney gal, decides to walk to town. The driver, Clyde, points toward the rear of the bus and tells her that town is four miles that way. In order to be able to view this better, picture your TV and see the front of the bus pointing toward the right of your screen. The rear of the bus is to the left of your screen and to the left of your screen is their town. Question is, how come the bus is heading away from town when they are on their way back into town? Another odd thing is after Clyde tells Doris the way home, she walks right past him and continues in the wrong direction. A bit later, the Sheriff, Wayne, played by Sean Patrick Flanery, shows up from town and is heading in the same direction as the bus, which would confirm that the bus is heading in the wrong direction. During this time the light bar on the Ford Bronco gets broken, yet once he turns around and heads back toward town, the light bar is fine. The Sheriff and passengers are in a four wheel drive, full size Ford Bronco, yet when the highway to town turns into a muddy road, he gets the Bronco stuck in a corn field. Even for such a small town, you see a few folks in the diner for breakfast, but once breakfast is over, you don't see anyone, other than a kid on a bike toward the end of the movie. To be fair there are two Amish men that appear, one is the father of Gretchen, who is on the bus. One is at the Amish farm. There is of course the town doctor, played by Rod Taylor and Betty played by Michelle Duquet who owns the diner, which is a central place in the movie. And finally there is the wife of the Sheriff, played by Kristin Booth, who really has no purpose in the movie other than to get stuck in a well with a dead cow. My final rating to this movie would be 6 stars out of 10. For the SciFi Channel, it was just an average movie that could have used a few more actors and a few less ravens. Worth watching once at least, but it doesn't make the cut when it comes to adding to my B_Movie collection.

If this movie sucked any worse I think the world would implode on itself. Lets see....where to begin. The out of town couple who find the menonite girls crashed truck. Why did we know that the husband would panic and back the car into the ditch across the road? The husband had plenty of room to turn around, or for that matter just keep backing down the road. Then the phone lines being down...what a crock of crap! No one in that town had a cell phone? The dispatcher had already said that she had radioed the state police...but they were busy...yeah right. Earlier during the daylight attack in the town we see numerous people in the street so I think that surely one of those townspeople would have either called on a cell phone, CB, ham radio or for that matter just got in their car and left. Why hadn't the High School sent someone out to look for the school bus when it didn't arrive back on time? I can also assure you that that bus would have had some type of CB or radio on it. Why the hell did Clyde tell the girls to shut the bus door when he went out to try and start the bus? We know the Ravens are going to attack and he will be running back into the bus, so why shut them to begin with? Clyde would get back in before the ravens even got there. Then in the cafe why was the owner overcome by the ravens and not anyone else? It didn't look like there were enough Ravens in there to do that much damage let alone actually kill a adult woman. But of course we had to have the Cafe owner die so Clyde could charge out and sacrifice himself so the others could survive.....YAWN. If your under 15 you might enjoy it, but otherwise you'll get as much enjoyment from listening to an Air Supply CD.

Rather than a "horror" movie, I see Kaw as a solid entry into the category of sf/adventure films that has a small group of believable, sympathetic characters battling in a logical manner against an outlandish threat. This genre includes many of the better creature features of the 1950s, and many subsequent imitations. (It: the Terror from Beyond Space comes to mind; so does the Tremors series.) What makes Kaw an adventure film, not a horror film, is the mood and, above all, the attitude of the characters: the protagonists react not with terror but with intelligence and fortitude. Kaw thus has very little in common with Hitchcock's The Birds, other than... well, the birds. Where Hitchcock's film is deliberately calculated to feel eerie and hopeless, Kaw is more down-to-earth. The survival of the species is never at stake; it's a purely local issue, and the characters treat it as a challenge to overcome. There's even a remarkably credible explanation of the birds' behavior, something conspicuously omitted by Hitchcock. (The inclusion of Rod Taylor in the cast of Kaw is a funny in-joke, though. Nice to see him again; he's looking old, but healthy.) The settings for Kaw add to the appeal. It seems to have been filmed in and around a genuine small rural town, and benefits from the muddy, fresh-air feel of that locale. The camera work is good, and the acting is uniformly excellent. Flannery, a vastly under-rated actor, does his usual fine work. But the real star is McHattie, as the smelly but ultimately admirable Clyde. The birds themselves are suitably menacing, not an easy thing to pull off, especially on a limited budget. The filmmakers have used real birds and lots of clever cutting to limit their reliance on CGI. If anything, this gives the film even more of a real-world feel. Kaw is well above the usual low standards of made-for-TV production, and a fine addition to a great genre. Come prepared to suspend your disbelief just a bit, and have a big bowl of popcorn ready.

I don't feel like wasting much of my time writing a long, in-depth review on a film such as Kaw, a Sci-Fi Original Movie, so let me get straight to the details here: This film is about a pack rabid birds (Supposedly just ravens, but it's pretty obvious that they have a mixture of ravens and crows in the there) that terrorize a town for a reason not revealed until near the end, and most of the film is spent following several people who meet up in the end, simply running from the creatures. It's really as simple and ridiculous as that. But, I don't think I've enjoyed a Sci-Fi movie as much as Kaw since the should-be cult-classic Alien Apocalypse (Starring Bruce Campbell) or the amazingly bad Nature Unleashed: Tornado. Yes, it has its mass of flaws including very mediocre CGI (a commonface among Sci-Fi movies), an uninteresting and generic plot/story, and an extremely lame, clichéd ending for the genre. But... I will go as far as to say the acting was pretty good/mediocre, but never laughably bad; an oddity with Sci-Fi movies. Same thing goes with the diologue which proved to be believable and somewhat interesting on occasion. Even though the movie doesn't have any 'scary' scenes (as expected), I was surprised to find that it did, however, have a few slightly intense moments here and there that had me creep towards my TV, as well as a good amount of blood and gore that was seemingly well-done. Overall, Kaw is a decent film for the Sci-Fi channel. Usually these movies end up being complete unbearable disasters, but this one was, to some extent, entertaining; I enjoyed watching this on my Saturday night where I didn't have much else to do, and I'd say it was worth watching. My Sci-Fi Channel Original Picture score for Kaw makes an easy 7/10, but my real score is shown above.