THE BIRTHDAY

D. Eugenio Mira:: USA 2005 :: 35mm :: Arcadia Pictures
Corey Feldman, Erica Prior, Jack Taylor

DIRECTOR, Eugene Mira will appear at this screening

Socially awkward Norman Forrester (Corey Feldman, doing an odd, feature-length Jerry Lewis impersonation) is nervously walking on eggshells. It's the night of his manipulative girlfriend's birthday and to mark the event, her millionaire father ('70s Eurohorror icon Jack Taylor, in his best role since THE NINTH GATE) has arranged an elaborate party in the lobby of his baroque Baltimore hotel. Forrester is terrified, but he is about to learn that this night offers much more to fear than the judgmental opinions of his potential in-laws.

Something sinister is visibly amiss amongst the hotel's staff. They seem to be in tense preparation for something much more significant than a bourgeois birthday. It's almost as if they're planning their own party for a very different and much darker birth occasion altogether. Situations get increasingly abnormal and people start to die until it becomes horrifically clear that Forrester better have his apocalypse shoes on, because this party might well be the last word in human history!

A very unusual, real-time black comedy that only reveals its true horror-film colours after lulling the audience into a false state of comfort, THE BIRTHDAY is a coolly distinctive feature debut for director Eugenio Mira. An odd bird indeed, Mira's film opens with the tone of an '80s comedy, introduces its horror aspects with a deliberately campy approach at the half-way mark then tears through the roof with a last act of nightmarish, Lovecraftian ferocity.

The narrative stands alone and Mira's calculated, stylish direction infuses the film with a playful atmosphere that pivots gracefully between fun, freaky and frightening. Feldman's performance, easily the strangest in his career, reaches surprising levels of intensity through its cartoonish surface and SECOND NAME's Erica Prior shines in a refreshingly lower-key role as Forrester's domineering girlfriend. Evocatively photographed in cinemascope with award-winning art direction inspired equally by the universes of BARTON FINK and BLUE VELVET, super-theatrical lighting and an ingenious sound design geared for maximum discomfort when necessary, this is a film absolutely designed to be experienced on a big screen in a darkened hall. This birthday is one Pagan party you won't want to miss. (Mitch Davis, Fantasia Film Festival )