One of the great treats of the horror genre is when a film successfully makes you scared of what in ordinary life is totally innocuous. When presented with the idea of a killer doll, or a homicidal car, or murderous birds, you may initially laugh, but excellent storytellers have turned those concepts into classics like Child’s Play, Christine, and, well, The Birds. There’s an extra hurdle that all of these titles have to surmount getting the audience to take the subject matter seriously, but when the hook is in, the results can be phenomenal.
