Alison is about to turn nineteen, and for some reason, her aunt and uncle want her to come home so they can celebrate. No longer a child, Alison just wants to do her own thing, but with a little pressure, she caves and heads home to suffer through some family time. It is not just having to spend time away from her boyfriend that bothers her; it is the memory of the séance she had when she was just sixteen years old that told her she would be in danger should she ever return home when she was nineteen. Still, she heads home and finds her aunt and uncle overly clingy and not wanting her boyfriend there at all. They also do not want her going into the woods, warning her off more than once. All of this is fine and dandy, yet Alison keeps hanging out with Pete, the man she loves, and she goes into the woods, where she discovers strange ruins. By the end of it all, Alison gets herself drugged, Pete tries to rescue her, and things go from bad to absolutely deadly.

There is a lot to enjoy in Alison’s Birthday, an Australian outing that is not all that scary until the final act, but it does make you uneasy, as it’s clear something is wrong with Uncle Dean, Aunt Jenny, and Grandmother Thorne. They seem like a nice, neat family at first, and for the most part, they probably were as Alison grew up. Now that Alison is reaching that magical number, though, the people she knows most are acting strangely and out of character. It is those actions, and the two’s demeanour, that make the audience anxious and apprehensive. As things progress and the two become more desperate to control Alison, trying to keep her in the house, the fear starts to creep in, and director Ian Coughlan does a great job of bringing that out.

Coughlan paints a heavy atmosphere, and you feel it as soon as Alison arrives at her relative’s house. This claustrophobic feeling adds to the horror in this picture, and without blood or anything like that, it goes a long way toward establishing what is to come. That said, the story and direction are far stronger than the acting. It is by no means unwatchable or intolerable; there are more films out there with far worse actors and actresses than this one, but they could have given it a little more to really put it over the top. Joanne Samuel, who plays Alison, is not all that bad, and she gets to cut her teeth a little more in those final few scenes. Lou Brown stars as her boyfriend and, out of them all, he is perhaps the weakest, though he is propped up by the tense situations he finds himself in and that aforementioned feeling of foreboding that runs through the movie. Additionally, John Bluthal and Bunney Brooke portray the uncle and the aunt, respectively and do a fair job of making their characters as creepy as possible.

For a horror film, Alison’s Birthday is not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon, and it will quench cravings for those who want a bit of a scare. There is not a lot to it, but it is told well; it hooks the viewer in, and it sticks the landing in more ways than one. It might have a weak point or two, but overall, it is worth a watch.

3 out of 5