Happy Birthday to Me is a very uneven mystery/slasher hybrid that rarely succeeds at either genre. As a slasher film, it's a pretty decent (if not a bit boring) movie. But as a mystery film, it's a convoluted mess that tries to make sense of itself, only to make the plot even more complicated and confusing.
Happy Birthday to Me starts out as a generic slasher movie, but with a good twist of mystery regarding the identity of the killer. Our main character is Virginia, a girl with amnesia. Throughout the film, the audience remains unsure whether or not she is the killer; her amnesia somehow triggers violence or something. This plot point is never explained very well, and only adds to the confusion of the "twist" ending. There's also a lot of phony-baloney psychology jargon that thrown around, and the scientific inaccuracies are irritating. Albeit horror movies aren't necessarily known for their realism, but as an psychology enthusiast, I found it very hard to look past this plot hole.
The first half of the film, as I said, is a pretty bland slasher movie. The movie seems to be building suspense, and it occasionally does, but it's never done effectively. There are too many characters, and it's hard to differentiate between them all. This causes the script to overextend itself at times, because it has too many characters to keep track of, while also trying to give us a reason to care about them. Coincidentally, the best parts of the movie are right around the middle of the film, once a few of the characters have been killed off.
Seeing as this a slasher movie, there is a surprising lack of makeup effects in this movie. While there is a fair amount of bloodshed during the death scenes, the victims are usually off-screen, or in a dimly lit area. That's not to say the death scenes aren't creative, however. The various implements used are typically improvised, which adds a touch of realism to the film. The killer's identity is hidden pretty well for the first few deaths; in a nice subtle touch, all the main characters wear their school colors on their scarves, and the killer does as well, keeping the audience guessing their identity. Even from a cinematography standpoint, the killer's identity is well concealed. Most of their shots are done in the first person, with the occasional shot of the killer's legs or hand. This doesn't add much to the plot, but it's the little things that keep this kind of movie from being flat-out terrible.
As for the latter half of the film, there is barely anything positive to say for it. The mystery aspect comes into play, and the execution is terrible. I can only assume that the script's intention was to toy with the audience's minds, but it's pulled off very poorly. The killer is revealed to be Virginia, who has somehow been murdering her friends because of repressed memories caused by an experimental brain surgery. This is only discussed during various flashbacks and discussions with Virginia's psychologist; the payoff makes sense, but the explanation ruins it.
Throughout the last act of the film, Virginia seems to be hallucinating and may not have killed anyone at all. Virginia also skewers her boyfriend with a kebab, but has no recollection of it the following morning. She also kills her friend when she comes to visit, but when Virginia's psychologist arrives and finds her in a crying heap, there's not a trace of blood or the corpse to be found. Virginia then proceeds to kill her psychologist; and when her father arrives a few hours later, she has somehow dug up her mother up out of her grave, and arranged all her previous victims in a display reminiscent of the dinner scene from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre".
This raises several logical questions; Virginia is obviously just a regular girl, and not some sort of superhuman mutant who could dig up a grave in what appears to only be an hour or two. It could probably be done, just not by a teenage girl. I'm also bewildered that Virginia was able to store all the corpses somewhere without anyone noticing. The movie takes places over several days, and the corpses would difficult to hid for that long without someone noticing. Virginia's motive is also questionable. The script never explains it very well, but from what I gathered, she seems to be seeking revenge on her mother's death because her mom drunk-drove off a bridge on the way to a birthday party.
Virginia then kills her dad, leading to a very strange sequence. The "real" Virginia was apparently tied up, and somehow Virginia had a secret half-sister or something that was out for revenge. Her sister somehow wore a mask identical to Virginia's face, and somehow was able to chloroform he sister into unconsciousness while she killed her friends. The half-sister's motive is equally contrived, and makes absolutely no sense given the prior direction of the script. The movie ends with the half-sister trying to kill Virginia. Virginia accidentally kills the sister, and moments afterwards, a detective from earlier in the film arrives at the scene of the crime. But when he arrives, Virginia is singing the Happy Birthday song to herself in an unsettling manner, just like her half-sister. This leaves the audience hanging; was Virginia the real killer? Is she going to be the next killer? We never find out, and all the unanswered questions are rather annoying.
Overall, this is a mess of a film. The script overextends itself and tries to do too much at once. If it had stuck with only the slasher movie elements, this would have been a much better film. The mystery and psychological thriller aspect is really clunky and rarely makes sense. There are a few enjoyable moments here and there, and a few mildly suspenseful scenes, too. But all the good parts of the film reside in the slasher-dominated first half of the movie. And to boot, there are long stretches of nothing happening, when there could be character development or suspense-building. For the most part, this is a very unenjoyable and boring movie. I would not recommend it at all. There are much better holiday-themed horror movies than Happy Birthday to Me, and this is a definite skip.
Enjoyment- 2/5
Quality- 2/5
IMDB Page- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082498/
May 7, 2012
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