The Birds

Melanie Daniels is a wealthy, somewhat aimless socialite in San Francisco. She meets Mitch Brenner in a pet shop — he playfully pretends to mistake her for a salesgirl, she plays along, they flirt. She finds out where he lives and drives to Bodega Bay to deliver a pair of lovebirds as a joke. Crossing the bay by boat to leave them at his house, a single gull dives and cuts her head. Mitch sees it from shore and rows out to help her.

She stays. The attacks escalate: birds gather in numbers that shouldn't be possible, a flock of sparrows pours down the chimney of the Brenner house, a schoolteacher friend of Mitch's named Annie is killed on her doorstep. The school is attacked during recess — birds dive at the children as they run screaming down the road. A farmer is found dead with his eyes pecked out. The townspeople at the Tides restaurant argue over what it means; the birds attack outside as they talk. Melanie is trapped in a glass phone booth as gulls shatter it around her.

The Brenner family boards up the house as night falls and the birds mass outside in the dark. They hold through the night. In the morning, there is silence. The birds are gathered everywhere in vast numbers — covering every surface, every wire, every rooftop — but they are still.

Mitch finds Melanie upstairs barely conscious: she had gone alone to check a sound and was attacked in an enclosed room. He gets her to the car. They drive slowly out through the waiting birds, which do not attack. The birds cover the road, the fields, the sky, as far as the eye can see. The film ends there. No explanation is given. No "The End" title card appears. The birds simply watch them go.