THE BIRTHDAY (2004)

3 stars

Arrow Streaming. Available Now

Here’s a weird one currently streaming on Arrow as despite being made in 2004 it’s one of those movies that fell through the cracks and has only recently been given a second chance due to some high profile fans like Jordan Peele — which you can now check out in 4K. Not sure whether Arrow will also give this a disc release at some point. More on its release history below.

Corey Feldman, of THE GOONIES fame, plays the jittery Norman. He is desperately in love with his seemingly stand offish girlfriend Alison (Eric Prior) and is understandably nervous when he is invited to her father’s birthday party, which is being held at a hotel which he owns. He wants to make a good impression with her rich dad and the wider posh family. He has even dressed up for the occasion, despite his lowly status of working in a pizza restaurant.

All is not as it seems, and not just because Alison’s family seem to be rather obnoxious and don’t treat Norman very well. The film meanders quite a bit to start with, centred around Feldman’s manic performance, then, following a slight plot contrivance, he finds himself in the bowels of the building and one of the waiting staff reveals to him what is actually happening. Norman then spends the rest of the film trying to prevent what the revelation reveals – which I won’t spoil here – and trying to get anybody else to believe him.

This weird amalgam of horror, science fiction and comedy was produced in 2004, and played several film festivals, but never gained any traction and failed to get distribution, so effectively became something of a “lost” film. It was available via ‘underground’ methods it seems. Both Feldman and the director Eugenio Mira were frustrated by the lack of any concrete release and managed to garner praise from people like Quentin Tarantino and Guillermo del Toro and the aforementioned Peele.

Is it an unfairly dismissed movie, due for reappraisal and discovery by an audience – probably not, though it is an interestingly odd watch. Feldman adopts a strange vocal nuance, which makes him sound like he is channelling Jerry Lewis, and his edgy acting almost works within the bizarre, almost Lynchian, world presented in Mikel Alvariño and Mira’s script. It’s the sort of movie that has rapturous over the top 10/10 reviews on the IMDB beside 1 out 10 write-ups. The truth is somewhere in between, and inevitably this will become some kind of cult favourite I suspect.

Steve Kirkham