This Geek in Netflix: It’s My Party and I’ll Die if I Want to

At 1AM on Monday night, I was feeling kinda loopy.  You know, that pleasant tired when one starts hallucinating that there might be clowns in one’s pocket.  Instead of doing what any normal person would do and curl up in sweet unconscious oblivion, I decided to watch a movie on Netflix.

After sorting through various obvious rejects (The Exorcist??  What a lame name—pass.), I decided on a swell looking flick called It’s My Party and I’ll Die if I Want to.  How could I go wrong?

Almost exactly 24 hours later, I’m not quite feeling equally loopy, but I’m definitely getting there.  So here’s some lazy reporting.  This low-budget film, shot for less than $20K per the production company’s website, has won awards at the Full Moon Film Festival (not associated with Full Moon Features), the Action on Film International Film Festival, the Dark Carnival Film Festival… okay, I’m stopping there.  This is boring me as I write it.  That’s talent.

The movie was made.  The movie was released.  The movie won some awards.  The movie had some unknown (but surprisingly decent) actresses in it, one of which is also in a movie called Fetish Dolls Die Laughing, which appears to be about how the “tickle monster” is real and turning women into perverted tickle fetishists.  This is almost the most fantastic thing I’ve heard all week.

Don’t ask what the most fantastic thing is.  Trust me.

According to legend—or at least the beginning of this film—in 1930, Jacob Burkitt locked up his family in their “manor” and, in typical batshit fashion, went on a murderous rampage, killing his wife and their six children.  Since that time, no one has been able to occupy the “manor” (it’s a goddamned house) for more than a few months and several more deaths have occurred within its walls.

Fast-forward to present day.  It’s Halloween—like it tends to be in horror movies—in some non-descript Midwest town.  While Sara, an over-achieving redhead, is out over-achieving and being generally sexless in nature, her friends are putting the finishing touches on her surprise birthday party… at the haunted Burkitt house.

Sara, you see, is a big horror movie and Halloween fan.  Maybe she’s simply just one of those quirky girls that loves the dark and macabre.  Maybe she’s self-obsessed and wants to celebrate her birthday year round because she’s a soulless redhead.  We’ll never know.

As her friends slowly trickle into the house to do pre-party hijinks, they start dying off.  And by dying, I mean they’re being gruesomely murdered by the ghosts of Jacob Burkitt and his family.  Just after the token Asian chick, Jill, gets her heart ripped out (not in that lame metaphor way), Sara receives her last minute party invite and pulls out a costume she “happened to have on hand”.

What is she for Halloween?  Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.  Fuck.  Yes.

Rushing over to her party, Sara soon finds that she’s got more in store for her than a few presents and some GHB.

This movie was incredibly low-budget.  Film quality hearkens back to the 70s—even though it was supposedly shot digitally.  Lighting was abysmal.  The sets were severely limited and the “manor” was laughably unmanor-like.

However, I actually enjoyed it.  The abysmal lighting added a realistic edge to particular scenes, addressing a constant mini-frustration I have with horror movies—the sudden disconnect from characters when we can see more than they can.  This movie managed to make me jump a few times, even with clichéd and should-have-expected-that maneuvers, and the acting was, for the most part, good.  I mean, the actress who plays Sara isn’t Nicholas Cage or anything, but she’s fine.

Primary complaints?  Complaint, really.  But it’s going to be an angry one.  The goddamned soundtrack.  Jesus would weep at this soundtrack, and then crucify himself in what would be a spectacularly failed attempt to redeem the movie.

Imagine this: you’re a very white-washed teen in rural U.S.A.  You wear pink jeans and may never have had a decent hair cut in your entire life.  Your friends are steps away from running the glee club.  What’s your soundtrack?  Angry rap?  Oh, of course.  This makes so much sense to just insert at every possible moment of character introduction to really give you a feel for the movie.

Other than that blip in an otherwise enjoyable film, it was fun.  While in the realm of the standard Tales From the Crypt feeling (with a nod to Trick ‘r’ Treat with graphic novel-style transitions), it managed to exceed my expectations and actually provide decent entertainment where the only time I felt like smashing my laptop closed was when the torturous soundtrack flared up.

Check it out on Netflix on Demand if you want a short horror film to temporarily call your own.  There’s tits and even a body double in a “goddamn, the director really wishes this was porn” shower scene.