Movie Review: “Alison’s Birthday” (NIGHTSTREAM)

November 22, 2021

Written by Kelli Marchman McNeely

Kelli Marchman McNeely is the owner of HorrorFuel.com. She is an Executive Producer of "13 Slays Till Christmas" which is out on Digital and DVD and now streaming on Tubi. She has several other films in the works. Kelli is an animal lover and a true horror addict since the age of 9 when she saw Friday the 13th. Email: horrorfuelinfo@gmail.com

Australian folk horror feature Alison’s Birthday (1981) is receiving its first release with the online NIGHTSTREAM film festival since its original VHS release. It’s a supernatural chiller that offers plenty of intriguing sequences and is worthy of finding a new audience.

Writer/director Ian Coughlan’s film opens with 16-year-old Alison (Joanne Samuel of Mad Max) and two friends experimenting with a makeshift Ouija board, which results in Alison’s dead father contacting her by possessing one of the other girls, warning Alison to beware of her 19th birthday, before a bookshelf falls on the girl and kills her. If that’s not enough to hook you, parentless Alison reluctantly goes back to her hometown with her disc jockey boyfriend Peter (Lou Brown) to visit her Aunt Jennifer (Bunney Brooke) and Uncle Dean (John Bluthall) to celebrate said 19th birthday, and discovers a Stonehenge-like structure in the land behind their backyard. You can guess that business picks up from there, and you would be right, because a father wouldn’t give a dire warning from beyond the grave to his teen daughter without meaning it — at least, not in this case.

Alison’s Birthday serves up a fun share of early eighties occult creepiness, with fine performances and several sequences that will grab your attention. Coughlan’s film is a well-paced, solid entry in the folk horror subgenre that deserves being rediscovered.

Alison’s Birthday screens as part of the online NIGHTSTREAM film festival, which runs October 7–13, 2021. For more information, visit https://nightstream.org and https://nightstream2021.eventive.org.

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