The Birthday (2004) 4K UHD Limited Edition
Synopsis: He picked the worst possible night to propose. His girlfriend’s father is throwing a lavish gala, every guest is just a little off, and the staff smile too wide. Somewhere between the hors d’oeuvres and the ring box, he stumbles into something ancient and watching.
Stars: Corey Feldman, Jack Taylor, Erica Pryor
Director: Eugenio Mira
Rated: NR
Running Length: 120 minutes
Movie Review in Brief: Arrow Video’s The Birthday 4K UHD Limited Edition restores Eugenio Mira’s long-shelved 2004 cult comedy-horror with the director’s personal involvement. Corey Feldman has never been better. Shelf Worthy from start to finish.
Review: Twenty Years on the Shelf, Now Twenty Years on Yours
Eugenio Mira finished The Birthday in 2004 and then the film sat unreleased in the United States for nearly two decades, building cult mythology in the way only orphaned movies can. Star Corey Feldman counts it as his favorite performance. After Jordan Peele caught a private screening at Feldman’s place, he promptly programmed it at Lincoln Center in 2023, where it finally premiered stateside almost twenty years after the rest of the world saw it. Arrow Video’s new Limited Edition is built around a restoration Mira sourced and oversaw himself. The disc treats the film like the rediscovery it deserves to be.
The Film: Lynchian Comedy-Horror with Corey Feldman in the Center
Norman Forrester (Feldman, The Lost Boys) arrives at a grand hotel for the birthday party of his girlfriend Alison’s (Erica Prior) wealthy father (Jack Taylor). He plans to propose but the night spirals into bizarre encounters with guests, alarmingly polite hotel staff, and a creeping occult conspiracy that threatens more than just his relationship.
The pitch is Alphabet City spliced with Smithereens by way of The Shining, with Spanish co-writers Mira and Mikel Alvariño scraping together budget and locations to recreate American 1980s set design inside a derelict Spanish hospital. The single-take fluidity gives the film a comic-book momentum that doesn’t let up. Mira shoots it like a stage play that’s been allowed to dream, with close-ups dissolving into masters and the camera following Norman through hallways like a backstage tour.
Feldman is the engine. His cracking-voiced, twitchy Norman commits from the first scene, and the performance pulls from Feldman’s real-life pop-culture survivor energy in ways the actor himself addresses on the commentary, drawing a “duality” between Norman’s warnings about hidden evil and his own industry advocacy work. The film knows exactly how to weaponize his persona. Prior’s Alison gives the relationship grit. Taylor brings the imposing charisma that made him an infamous star of a number of European exploitation films of the 1970s.
The middle act sags slightly under its melodrama, but the third-act payoff justifies the buildup. This is a midnight movie in the best, original sense. It deserved a theatrical run twenty years ago. It belongs in the cult conversation now.
The Disc: Mira Hunted the Negative Himself
Arrow’s 4K restoration from the original negative came together through Mira’s personal investment, including hunting down the source elements and restoring footage on his own. Presented in Dolby Vision with HDR10 compatibility, region free. The 80s aesthetic finally has the color depth to land the way it was always supposed to, and the high-dynamic-range pass gives the third act in particular a visual confidence the film never previously had access to.
Audio is original DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround. Mira’s score is the disc’s stealthy weapon, weaving layers of sound into the action with the kind of intentionality that gets lost in lossy streaming compression.
Extras: Pathology, Q&A, and a Wild Feldman Commentary
The audio commentary with Feldman and Mira is one of the more candid tracks of recent memory. Feldman draws parallels between Norman’s outsider energy and his own industry warnings about abuse. He also tries to claim he actually bounced a glass back into his hand on camera. Mira gently corrects him with the actual shot setup, which the bonus documentary then breaks down in detail.
Pathology (16 minutes) walks through exactly how the film’s fluid camerawork was achieved, including the glass-bouncing trick. The Shape of a Miracle (17 minutes) is a director interview where Mira credits Donnie Darko as a major influence and describes the film as a love letter to cinema. The 2024 Fantastic Fest Q&A captures the chaotic charm of seeing the film with a live audience two decades after it was shot. A reversible sleeve and a collectors’ booklet with new writing by Bryan Reesman complete a release that takes a fringe favorite seriously.
Where It Lands
Shelf Worthy. A cult rediscovery that earned its restoration, with extras that double as a master class on the kind of one-location, single-take filmmaking that’s nearly extinct in 2026.
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