* I updated my review from 2008 to when i just saw it again in 2023
In 2004, Corey Feldman made a movie called The Birthday, in Spain. It never made it to America besides a few film festivals.
Jordan Peele had a film festival this week at the Walter Reede Theater and he wanted to close it out with this film. This was essentially the US world premiere, almost 20 years later.
I had seen this movie probably a decade ago thanks to the internet, but it was a crummy German dvd rip and it really lost a lot of its detail and sound design. This screening was a 35 mm print and it looked and sounded amazing.
Corey and the director Eugenio Mira were both in attendance to speak briefly before the start and to have a 25 minute Q&A after the film ended.
The film itself is about a man named Norman (Feldman) who is attending a birthday party for his girlfriend's father at the hotel he owns. What starts out as a relationship plot slowly over time deviates into something more sinister. Throughout the movie, there is a building undertone of dread and mystery as the soundtrack drones on with weird ambient noises that sneak up on you from the background.
About a third of the way in, things start to get weird. Unfolding slowly is the real plot, involving a religious cult who believe that the beast that will usher in the end of the world is being born in that hotel that night.
I don't want to go too much further into the plot, but the last 15 minutes or so are so visually and aurally intense and there is so much chaos going on all at once. It reminded me a lot of some of David Lynch's work. Seeing it in the theater really brought out the sound design, which was one of my favorite parts of this movie.
Feldman is at his best here. He plays the character with a tinge of comedy, channeling Peter Falk (during the q&a, he claims he was doing a Pacino impression from Dog Day Afternoon but I'm not gonna agree). He's got a weird voice that is ridiculous at first but after two minutes I couldn't see him playing it any other way. He plays the opposite of his usual cool and confident characters as a meek nebbish pushover. This characteristic is a major part of the plot as he tries the entire movie to get his girlfriend aside to have a serious talk about their relationship but he's constantly being ignored.
The film has plenty of weird stuff going on, strange characters throughout and a lot of comedy at the expense of the weird. Feldman plays out a lot of slapstick comedy in this film and it works well. The entire film is set inside the hotel so you see the same sets over and over again but you never get bored of the scenery.
Feldman and Mira spent a good amount of time answering questions about the film after the film ended. A bunch of good stories were told and it was being filmed. Perhaps that footage will make it to a BluRay release at some point in the future.
Highly recommended.
