KAW

Sheriff Wayne and his wife Cynthia are about to move from a sleepy province to a big city, but the sheriff's last day of work coincides with the mysterious arrival of a flock of giant crows that begin to attack humans. The crows seem driven by an inexplicable bloodlust that appears to originate from Jacob's farm, a Mennonite who lives with his family raising livestock. How many films tell the story of nature's revolt against humanity through various animal species? Many, and in recent years in Italy, they often arrive directly on DVD, abundant every month to fill the ranks of the latest releases in video rental stores. The most sought-after are films with killer wasps and genetically modified killer sharks, films that generally move from "ugly" to "terrible" with great ease. Amidst so many useless TV movies, sometimes there are also products of decent quality, as in the case of "Kaw – The Attack of the Imperial Crows," a film produced by the American Sci-Fi Channel for TV, but also presented at the Festival du Film Fantastique de Gérardmer. "Kaw" is not one of those films that leaves you completely satisfied; in fact, at the end of the viewing, you remember more the flaws than the merits of this feature film, but in the end, it is a film of commendable quality and definitely more successful than many other similar products. The starting point is the unforgettable Hitchcockian work "The Birds," with its inexplicable and chilling revolt of birds against man; in "Kaw," the irrationality of Hitchcock's film, which carried an ecological message and a reflection on man's atavistic fears, is replaced by a (fantasy)scientific explanation that justifies the aggression of the birds. Elsewhere, the search for a rational, even scientific, explanation would have appeared didactically annoying, but in "Kaw" it has a certain functionality and effectiveness, even if it is not particularly original. The desire to combine the suggestions of beast movies and the fear of contagion with religious extremism is nevertheless a sufficiently innovative element, highlighting the harmful bigotry that hovers over some fringes of contemporary rural America, still invaded by the specter of superstition. Of course, from the picture painted in "Kaw," the conservative Protestant community comes out depicted as a source of ignorance and danger for the entire community, a somewhat extreme and certainly debatable stance, but capable of giving the entire film a particular (polemical) reading key. The director is Sheldon Wilson, already the author of "Shallow Ground – Buried Mysteries," who does not give the product particular personality but conducts the dance with undeniable taste. In the cast, there are many little-known faces from TV, including Sean Patrick Flanery ("Masters of Horror II: Damnation"), Kristin Booth ("Supernatural"), and Stephen McHattie ("History of Violence;" "The Tree of Life"); the special effects (including digital ones) are of good quality. What doesn't work well in "Kaw" is the typically TV-like pace: even though in the 80 minutes of duration the film presents a great variety of situations, ranging from premonitory signs to the inevitable siege in the style of "Night of the Living Dead," the events often appear flat and little able to engage the viewer; the "anthemic" and too invasive soundtrack certainly contributes to this. Furthermore, some "ideas" appear decidedly ridiculous and too silly, as can be noticed in the scene of the attack on the school bus where the crows try to break the vehicle's windows by throwing stones they hold in their claws at them. In general, "Kaw – The Attack of the Imperial Crows" is a very light film that is easy to watch and certainly represents one of the highest achievements in recent TV productions about killer animals. Keep away ornithophobes!