So my 30th birthday rolled around (I know, I know, I'm almost dead) and I started thinking about other cinematic birthday nightmares and only one movie really came to mind. The movie I am about to discuss is memorable for two things. One is the shish-kabob through the mouth (just like in the poster) and the ridiculous double-twist ending that throws the film into the realm of preposterousness. But I don't want to get ahead of myself. Warning, this review contains MAJOR SPOILERS!

Melissa Sue Anderson (TV starlet from Midnight Offerings) plays the puffy-faced Ginny, who's lost her mother a while back in a tragic accident and has recently moved back to the town where it all happened with her dour-faced father. She has become a member of the top-10, who are basically the cool rich kids of this small town. Their idea of a good time is getting drunk and racing their cars up rising bridges and jumping the gap before its too late. The problem is that this very same activity caused the death of Ginny's drunken mother, so she is not that excited about participating. Ginny is still mourning the death or her mother, which is still a very sore open wound. She goes to a psychiatrist regularly (played by Glen Ford) and is slowly getting through her trauma until her friends start dying.

One by one, the annoying stock characters that play her friends are murdered in interesting ways. Of course, this happens maybe every ten minutes and the rest is a dull, lackluster drama. The film runs two hours, which is very rare for a hack-and-slash, and the problem is that it feels like three hours. After a while, the dullness of the characters made me stop caring, even if one of them dropped dead every so often. And the weird thing is that no one really cares or looks worried that their friends have suddenly gone missing. "Hey guys, our friends are missing!" "Oh, don't worry, they'll probably show up eventually." This isn't actual dialog, of course, but it damn well could have been. Then, about halfway through the film, we get a big revelation when Ginny kills one of her friends right in front of our eyes! Ginny's been the killer the whole time? Well, it sort of makes sense. From this point on to the end we follow her on her merciless quest to kill her friends for some reason we aren't aware of. We never really know why, either. The suspense goes right out the window, not that there ever was any.

At the same time, Ginny seems blissfully ignorant of the fact that she is a murderer. Or is she just that cold? Or does she have a split personality? I am about to reveal the bullshit surprise ending, so turn back now if you don't want it spoiled....Okay, I warned you. The night of Ginny's birthday (hence the title) she notices a light coming from a shack in the woods across the way from her house. She walks over and finds all of her dead friends propped up around a table with a birthday cake on it. She obviously didn't do this and is about to leave when she is hit on the head. She awakens tied up to a chair and finds a twin sister looking down at her. Ginny is shocked to realize that she has a twin, as are we, but then the film goes bonkers and decides to add another twist. Her twin-sister's face comes off and her best friend is revealed underneath! It turns out that she really is her half-sister and that Ginny's mother slept with her father and it was her reason her parents got divorced. The half-sister blames Ginny for her broken home, but Ginny escapes and kills her sister. Her mind broken beyond repair by all that's happened, she starts to sing happy birthday to herself in the room with all her dead friends. The stupid, dumb ass end.

This is a beloved slasher film, so I was more surprised than anyone that upon revisiting the material I was so turned off by it. If the film had been shorter, and moved faster, I think I would have liked. However, that sour apple of an ending kind of stuck in my craw and I don't think I could forgive the movie for trying to be Rubix's answer to slasher surprise endings. It doesn't even make sense! Why would her half-sister go through the trouble of making a mask of Ginny if she was just going to kill the friends off? They weren't going to tell anyone it was Ginny, they're dead! So, if you think about it, the only reason she had the Ginny mask was to trick us! That's right, the producers of this film were trying to trick the audience and that's false, because we shouldn't exist in the context of the film world and the mask should be unnecessary. Maybe I'm getting a bit to literal, but the truth is that when a movie tries to trick us and not the people in the film world then the trick is false and thusly makes no sense as far as the reality of the film goes. Hence, this film becomes improbable. And who raised the half-sister so Ginny wouldn't know about her? She would've noticed her mom pregnant and remember a sister running around too! This movie has so many plot holes it hurts. Since they're remaking everything, someone make sure not to let M. Night Shayamalan know about this one!

- Jose Prendes