Stream It Or Skip It?

Movies That Time Forgot almost never get a second chance, but The Birthday (now streaming on Shudder) is the rare exception. This strange-ass surreal-ass wacko-ass thing from Spanish director Eugenio Mira and starring Corey Feldman (!) originally hit a teeny segment of the festival circuit in 2004. But when producers wouldn’t compromise on a direct-to-DVD release, the film was buried and forgotten for nearly two decades, until Jordan Peele discovered it, screened it for the public and prompted a restoration and a 2024 run at Alamo Drafthouse theaters. This is the type of backstory that pretty much defines a cult movie – and any question as to whether it FEELS like a cult movie is confirmed about two minutes in, after you hear Feldman’s comically pinched voice and get an eyeful of all the Brylcreem in his hair. Insane movie!

The Gist: An opening title card defines The Birthday as “the most amazing 117 minutes in the life of Norman Forrester.” It’s 1987. Norman (Feldman) is gussied up in a tux with a horrific baby-blue frilled shirt, his coif more goop than hair. He’s in a hotel that seems to have had its gilded glory days and faded. He’s here to meet his girlfriend Alison (Erica Prior), and they’ll attend her hoity-toity father’s birthday party. They’ve been dating for a year, and this will be the first time Norman gets to meet her family. He’s a little nervous and excited and there’s the overwhelming sense that he’s the plebian among royalty – Alison gives off serious princess vibes, and if I were to read into it, I’d say he has strong feelings for her while she keeps him around as a placeholder, or at least is on the verge of breaking up with him like an elephant might stomp on a roach.

Now, the previous summary is straightforward to a fault. Coursing beneath the setup is an off-kilter tone that tells us that something strange and mysterious is going on here beyond an inevitable dumping, at first couched in Alison’s behavior, and soon all the other characters’ behavior, too. You know, like what’s her deal? followed by what’s that guy’s deal? followed by what’s EVERYBODY’S deal? Norman makes his way to the party by himself, gets off at the wrong floor where a party hosted by a friend of his, Vincent (Dale Douma), rages. The movie fiddles around here before Norman goes down to the birthday party, where Alison ignores him, her father Ron (Jack Taylor) doesn’t seem to know he exists and her mother sits slack-jawed, like she’s in a waking coma. It’s a distinct vibe, like Norman’s the guest of honor at a human sacrifice and nobody wants to make eye contact with him, except for a horny drunk woman at the bar.

The story proceeds with something bordering on dream logic, quietly slipping into nightmaresville. The waiters seem to be acting strangely. An arrogant lounge singer takes the stage like he’s headlining Madison Square Garden. The lights go out for a minute, then guys who resemble Dollar Tree Ghostbusters bust into the room with weird equipment. Norman jumps between Vincent’s party and the birthday party, with various and sundry lengthy tangential episodes in-between; he goes up and down the elevator so many times, it’s comical. Just as we’re about to lose our footing, Norman shares an openhearted moment with Alison, who seems to have ditched her aloofness. Ah. Thank you. A moment of sanity. But of course it’s just a breather before something takes hold, a certain something that like REIGNS like few things reign: CHAOS! 

Corey Feldman and Eugenio Mira discuss “The Birthday” at the Walter Reade Theater in Lincoln Center on January 13, 2023 in New York City. Photo: Getty Images

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Birthday is a sub-cult bizarro-com that keeps us teetering on a ledge like the 1981 Belushi-and-Akroyd classic-to-me-and-about-three-others Neighbors. It also slow-builds into a panicked dervish a la the similarly weirdly stylized Miracle Mile.

Performance Worth Watching: Goonies, Stand By Me, The Lost Boys and The Birthday? Sure! That’s a pretty solid canon. Filmed before Feldman’s life and career got crazy-sensationalist and reality-show-pilled — where to begin, where to begin — The Birthday finds the actor fully, ambitiously, admirably committed to its strange, surrealist demeanor. 

Memorable Dialogue: Norman shares his feeling of alienation to Alison: “I feel like the wrong corpse at the wrong funeral in there or something.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Photo: Drafthouse

Our Take: The Birthday is top-to-bottom front-to-back north-south-east-west peculiar, frequently spinning into outlandishness. Its tone, pace, dialogue, performances, plot and visual style are distinctive to the type of movie that’s going for broke and trying not to get over the skis of its unique vision, audiences be damned. It’s odd how the passing of David Lynch has prompted me to notice his influence with increasing frequency, and Mira – who hopefully spins this resurgence of interest into another bonkers film project – taps into dream-state rhythms that are best described as Lynchian, and encourage us to marinate in the surreal vibe instead of trying to Make Sense Of Things.

There is, however, an overarching thematic concern involving Norman’s feelings of instability within his relationship. The lunacy of his quickly unraveling evening – which plays out in real time with slow-ballooning tension – functions as a metaphor for the uncertainty and madness of two people contending with differing levels of romantic commitment. Norman is truly, madly in love, and has noble intent, voicing earnestly that finally meeting Alison’s family is a good positive step forward for them. Her tone, however, ranges from cruelly dismissive to, at best, cowed by pity for a guy who surely feels like a schlub and an imposter among well-moneyed “royalty.” (Norman’s job? He works at a pizza joint.) Such discordance can make a poor fella feel insane – just ask Sam Neill’s character in Possession, which fashioned a similar sense of surreal psychological turmoil, albeit in a far more sinister and grotesque fashion. 

There’s plenty of subtextual stuff to be turned up for those inclined to root around. And it plays well with The Birthday’s tone and style, with Mira and editor Alejo Levis maintaining slowly spiraling momentum with a few virtuoso camera maneuvers and the highly amusing repetition of Feldman boarding the same elevator with its faded-gold doors. Mira and Mikel Alvarino’s screenplay never clarifies what’s really, truly going on, despite amusingly breathless exposition dumps that feel like too much, very much on purpose, and for comedy’s sake; there’s the sense that a second narrative plays out in the margins of the frame, doling out clues that may add up to something substantive on a second viewing. The film’s suspense hinges on the sense that a big reveal could occur at any time, but it’s too uneager to please to actually indulge such a thing. Believe it or not, that makes The Birthday a better, smarter film.

Our Call: The Birthday absolutely deserves its cult status. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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