Once every year, we always have that day where we celebrate the day we were born, and we always celebrate in all the crazy ways that we know best. Unless you’re the Mad Hatter in which case, so with it being that day for me, I felt it obvious to review the movie Bloody Birthday.
In the town of Meadowvale, three women going into labor on the night of a Solar Eclipse, which is said to have very odd effects on the new born child that is born with one present. Ten Years Later, a series of murders have started to occur in the little town and that upsets three children, Debbie, Curtis and Stephen and they start to get suspicious that there plans are going to be soon found out.
It’s pretty obvious that the kids are the murderous. I don’t really mind that, but what I do mind is the fact is that they are extremely obvious about it. They talk about their plans without very much secrecy and other people are within listening distances from them. Their motives are simply because they don’t get to do what they want. I guess that could be appropriate giving the fact they’re just children, but it wares down their characters to having absolutely weak motives. Plus I thought they weren’t very good actors. I think tried too hard to be like Rhoda from Bad Seed or Damien from the Omen.
Another problem I had with the characters wasn’t very much about the kids but is more about every other character in the film. Basically, it was incredibly obvious the kids were committing the murders, but nobody could put that together. The only character who figures that out is around the same age as the three of the kids, but of course nobody believes him at all. Aside from that, every other character was extremely generic and not very memorable. I guess that’s probably due to the fact that it’s a generic ‘80s slasher film. The only character I remember was Beverly only because she’s played by the former MTV star Julie Brown.
For this being a slasher film, it was surprisingly lacking in the violence department. It’s probably because of that the kids don’t really know how to be more violent, but I don’t think that’s the case considering they have peep shows of Debbie’s sister getting dressed and they often charge for it. Plus they know how to use a real gun, so I’m probably guessing they just didn’t have a budget for some for it.
The whole idea of the kids being the killers was probably a different and unique idea back in the day, but since they already existed with The Bad Seed and The Omen, plus all of the modern ideas with child in horror films, it comes off as interesting but wasn’t willing to make them creepy or interesting characters in any way.
Final Thoughts: This was a really bad movie. The characters weren’t memorable, the plot was generic, and it was very dull in terms of other slasher films out there. It’s pretty much is a slasher that was forgotten throughout the Eighties and most likely will only be remembered by frequent horror film watchers…Like me. I probably will go watch The Bad Seed instead of this again.
