I enjoyed this! I'm saying that with genuine surprise because I don't think Killbird is for everyone. It's very slow burn, the story is too convoluted for its own good and yet still for most of the movie not a lot happens beyond two people talking, and the dialogue is barely passable. But somehow, this micro-budget spy thriller set in the backwoods kept my full attention from the very start.
Killbird begins with a seemingly chance encounter between a photographer having car trouble and a suspicious and possibly paranoid hermit living off the grid far from civilization. We're left guessing if these people are really who they say they are, and as more characters are introduced things only get less clear. It's hard to puzzle out who, if anyone, the viewer should be rooting for and who is actually telling the truth.
I'll be honest, the story somewhat gets drowned in endless conspiracy babble and repeated "who are you" conversations. But, for some reason this movie connected with me and I was hooked. I hesitate to recommend Killbird because it definitely, DEFINITELY has flaws and the smaller budget (and underwhelming script) really requires some imagination from the audience to make things believable, but I think I'm that one person out of five that this movie works for. And no, it's not because I love Battlestar Galactica so much that I did geek out over seeing a few cast members for the first time in years. At the very least, the setting is novel for this genre, Elysia Rotaru is a very capable lead, and I admire that this movie does a lot with limited resources.
