The Birthday (2004) Farcical Doomsday Celebration Twenty Years Late to the Party

Last year I reviewed the Russell Crowe-helmed The Exorcism, a film I made a big deal out of for being filmed all the way back in 2019, only to be pushed out a whole five years later in 2024. Well, that seems mighty quaint now compared to the curious case of The Birthday. 

This is a Spanish production filmed in English, and it’s the debut of Eugenio Mira and Mikel Alvariño; the film begins with a ding as a vintage lift opens up to an art deco hotel floor, and out walks… a surprisingly young looking Corey Feldman. Not Stand By Me young, but a far cry from his modern dad-rock hair-dye era. Add to that the particularly soft-looking use of 35mm stock that can’t quite be achieved with modern film, and something feels instantly off.

The thing about The Birthday is that it was filmed, edited, and completed all the way back in 2004 and is only now seeing a proper release a whole twenty years later. The story behind this is frankly as underwhelming as it gets. At the time it screened at a few film festivals where it saw mild acclaim but as a result of both the producers’ inexperience in post-distribution and dissatisfying exhibition offers, the film eventually faded away as a true cult classic that only survived via a few bootleg DVDs and a very dodgy rip available on Youtube. It sounds unthinkable that a film can be in a finished state, premiere to good reviews, and then fall by the wayside at the last hurdle, but especially before films could be dumped on streaming that was and still is a very real obstacle producers face in the very last phase of the filmmaking process. That was until the film’s star and executive producer Corey Feldman got into contact with, of all people, Jordan Peele, who just so happens to be a Feldman superfan. He was told about this bizarre anomaly in Feldman’s work and has almost single-handedly brought about the creation of this new 4K restoration. The film saw a small theatrical release in 2006 in Spain, but until now has never been officially screened anywhere else in the world.

The Birthday begins as a small scale comedy of errors about Norman (Feldman), a small, meek guy who’s head over heels for his socialite girlfriend Alison (a brilliantly condescending Erica Fulton). They’re staying at a hotel owned by her father for a party celebrating his birthday, where coincidentally he’ll also be introducing himself to her incredibly rich, out of touch family. What starts out as a weird social farce of awkward details- a running gag I enjoyed early on in the film is that Alison stroppily tells Norman to hold an empty glass in her bathroom, but as a result of his anxious demeanor he’s left holding the glass for a good portion of the film- snowballs into a surrealist madcap horror featuring doomsday cults and double agents.

The film shows its age in a very satisfying manner, a Spanish indie debut that Eugenio Mira manages to mirror flawlessly with the American indies The Birthday should have been rubbing shoulders with; Brick-era Rian Johnson, Four Rooms-era Robert Rodriguez/Alexandre Rockwell/Quentin Tarantino/Allison Anders, in particular there’s strong echoes of the paranoid, nonsensical purgatorial hotel shenanigans of the Coen’s Barton Fink. However the filmmaking approach to this story is at once bold but also deeply conflicted. Primarily this film’s visual style consists of a surprising amount of long-takes, usually a very handsome and welcome feature of any film but here it feels deeply confused and awkward, it has the same out of step, unfinished feeling of watching a series of deleted scenes but here it’s the entire film. A scene of Norman on the roof watching a structure collapse but because we don’t see what he’s looking at feels incomplete. Another moment in the climax where Norman gives the emotional monologue that the whole film has been gearing towards is instead depicted entirely by a shot of Alison’s back while he speaks off-screen epitomises the oddball construction of The Birthday. If I knew any better I’d say it feels unfinished, like the film is missing shots or scenes, but at the same time these quirks could easily be chalked up to Mira’s pivot towards surrealism and the bizarre, but in terms of taste I found it supremely distracting for a film that is otherwise brilliantly well-made.

Although it shouldn’t be overlooked how extraordinary Corey Feldman is here, his rapid insecure energy paired with his knack for comedy screen-acting is addictive and totally anchors what he has called his personal favourite of all his performances, which only adds to the sting that the film never saw the light of day for so many decades. It’s a film that at the very least deserved to have a life as an Optimum Releasing DVD that would be a regular fixture of afterthought charity shop shelves, or lost in the bowels of CEX, waiting for someone who vaguely recognises the guy from The Goonies all grown up to say ‘why not’? As charmed as I am by the history that led this film to where it is today I still think there’s a fundamental dissonance within The Birthday’s concept and execution that left me puzzled for mostly the wrong reasons than the confusion Mira was intending, yet I can’t help but champion such an unloved yet singular work being revived like this. I may not agree with Jordan Peele’s emphatic appraisal of this film, but at the film’s premier he had this to say: “a cinematic marvel that demands captivation and will never relent to your expectations. A true ‘what-the-f-did-I-just-watch’ experience. Feldman at his best.” And I’d much rather take Jordan Peele’s word over mine.

JAKE’S ARCHIVE – THE BIRTHDAY (2004)