Review of Unhappy Birthday

This movie is stylishly made and definitely pulls you along, helped mainly by Jill Riddiford's performance as the pious and grandmotherly Corinne. Riddiford keeps you guessing until the very end whether she is unhinged or just childlike and pitiable. That said, this is also one of those thrillers where the characters have to make all the wrong (and increasingly stupid) decisions in order to keep the (ridiculous) plot going. By the end, I knew I was supposed to feel the horrible moral ugliness of the deranged religious fundamentalism espoused on "the island", but all I saw was a series of gruesome hate crimes (with the gay guy, of course, getting it the worst). It's been done before--and with less obvious sadistic relish.