The Birthday
directed by Eugenio Mira
starring Corey Feldman, Jack Taylor
Arrow Video
Eugenio Mira’s 2004 feature The Birthday is a meticulously curated fever dream. The film unfurls in real time at a hotel where reality is a nebulous concept. Despite screening at a number of prestigious film festivals, The Birthday never found a distribution suitor. It did however garner a number of famous fans, including Guillermo Del Toro, Quentin Tarantino, and Jordan Peele, the latter of whom showcased the film at the Lincoln Center, opening it up to a wider audience.
Around the mid-point of the movie, a character says “you never know what’s going to happen until the end,” and that sentiment summarizes this movie perfectly. The Birthday plays like one of those anxiety dreams, where you have seemingly simple but important tasks to do that keep getting interrupted by random people and events delaying or diverting you from your goal. For the socially awkward, nebbish Norman Forrester (Corey Feldman), the main task is meeting his girlfriend’s rich parents at a birthday party for her father, held in the ballroom of the faded luxury hotel they own. He also needs to present his girlfriend with a gift he has bought to show his true feelings for her. Everything, from a drinking glass he can’t seem to get rid of, to old high school acquaintances, to conspiratorial demon hunters, flummoxes him at every turn. Over the course of the evening, he discovers that the birthday party isn’t just about celebrating the anniversary of the old man’s birth, but also about a long prophesied induction of some unknown Eldritch horror into our universe via his girlfriend’s family.
Like the film’s famous champions, Tarantino, Del Toro, and Peele, Eugenio Mira wears his influences on his sleeve. The Shining, Brazil, and the works of David Lynch are obvious nods with deeper cuts owing to the 1970s horror and giallo thrillers from Mira’s native Spain and Italy. Like the Eurocult films of his youth, Mira’s film is deliberately strange and off-putting, steadfastly refusing to hold the viewer’s hand. The mix of dream logic, class commentary, and cosmic horror is not going to work for everyone, but those who warm to the charms of The Birthday will discover a deeply layered film that rewards the viewer with more and more to chew on with multiple viewings.
