Decades after playing the genre festival circuit and spearheaded by a group of heavyweight fans, including Jordan Peele, Eugenio Mira’s The Birthday is finally getting a proper release, with a 4K restoration, no less. It pops  up in art house cinemas across North America. In Toronto, it plays at the Revue Cinema on November 8th and 10th. The film aims to expand its fan base through these screenings and VOD before a possible home release later this year through Drafthouse Films. Corey Feldman’s self-proclaimed favourite film performance, The Birthday sees him muddle his way through a film that feels like it’s been made odd just for the sake of being weird. 

Norman Forrester (Feldman) is a strange fellow. Devoted to his girlfriend Allison (Erica Prior), Norman tags along to her father’s birthday party at his recluse hotel. Having never met any of Allison’s family, and not being welcomed by them, Norman fails to impress her father Ron (Jack Taylor), or the rest of her family, including Uncle Casper (Rick Merrill). Retreating from the birthday party, Norman stumbles upon his friend Vincent (Dale Douma), who also seems like he doesn’t particularly like Norman despite greeting him and offering advice. As Norman wanders between the 2 parties he stumbles upon the plans of a cult, made up of the wait staff, and their desire to birth their saviour out of one of the guests.

This is the type of oddball cinema that always divides audiences, usually into one of two extreme reactions, love or hate. It also feels very much like a film of its time, initially making its festival run in 2004. Many younger filmmakers were embracing oddball cinema at the time, trying to emulate the early works of Wes Anderson and Christopher Nolan. However, The Birthday never quite comes together in the end, feels completely aimless at parts, and is quite long, eventually outstaying its welcome. And it is because of this disjointed nature that the film feels like its weirdness is more of a marketing ploy than a structural necessity.

I’m not exactly sure what Feldman is trying to achieve with his accent in this film. As Norman states in the film, his parents are from Brooklyn but have settled in Baltimore, yet Feldman gives Norman an accent that distinctly feels like it’s from neither place at all. It also disappears almost completely when he yells or swears. In a film that is structured to feel and look bizarre, it might be the most bizarre choice of them all. 

Veteran actor Jack Taylor has constraints in his performance because of his character’s need for a tracheostomy tube in his throat but he still manages to properly convey his menace towards Norman throughout. It’s a solid performance that stands out in a cast that has predominantly worked sparingly before and since The Birthday was filmed. The lack of chemistry between Feldman and Prior on screen feels like it’s more than just the script’s fault as the two never seem to gel on screen.

With a 2-hour runtime, The Birthday is far too long, especially when you take into account the methodically slow pace of the first 60 minutes. By the time the events start to reveal themselves at the beginning of the second hour, at pretty much exactly the one hour mark, a good number of the audience will likely be ready to tap out, I certainly was tempted to. But I stuck around until the final frame, which I found profoundly underwhelming. So this film was not for me, but my years of experience tell me that this film will convert more to its cause. Because as much as The Birthday was not to my taste, I’ve seen plenty of films of its ilk become beloved cult classics over the years.