I really do enjoy Willem Dafoe as an actor. I have this thing where a lot of times performances and actors sell me on movies even more than what the actual film is about, or anything else about the film. Sometimes I can just see that there’s an actor in a film and I’m immediately more intrigued by their presence, and it makes me want to see it. So when I was offered the opportunity to screen The Birthday Party, starring Willem Dafoe, I was at first concerned that it might not be in English, but after I was assured that it was, I decided to dive in. Quiver is distributing this, and it does not have audio description, although I’ve seen Quiver movies go to Amazon, where they toss text-to-speech audio description on them. So it’s possible later on in life I may be able to see this again with audio description, although I don’t know that I would want to. Dafoe, while a solid actor, is often beholden to the roles he’s offered. And sometimes, as evidenced by The Birthday Party, he’ll say yes to something that doesn’t quite work.

This feels very sophomoric to me. Even without the audio description, and with some scenes that were not as easy for me to follow, I clocked this movie far too early and wasn’t surprised by the direction it was headed. So instead of talking about The Birthday Party for a moment, let’s talk about something else and give this some context. Puccini’s opera Gianni Schicchi sees a family trying to somewhat comically alter a will in their favor through a series of convenient, often comedic circumstances. Within that opera, there is an incredibly famous aria, “O mio babbino caro,” which is sung by Lauretta. In it, Lauretta is pleading with her father to let her marry the man she loves, and if she doesn’t get to marry him, she’ll just die. Within the context of the opera, her father is working several schemes, and by the end of it, situationally, Lauretta is allowed to marry after the will has been repurposed in his favor, so that the marriage is presumably less problematic.

Why would I bring this up? Because right at the start of the film, Willem Dafoe’s Marcos Timoleon is sitting and listening to “O mio babbino caro.” Long story short, the movie is essentially about this wealthy businessman who invites a bunch of people over to his house for, I will let you guess what. Hint: check the title of the film. Notably, he would really love for his daughter Sofia, played by Vic Carmen Sonne, to be in attendance, which of course she is. Sofia is secretly in love with somebody, and her father does not approve. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Only in this situation, the daughter doesn’t sing to her father about her woes. She’s a modern woman. She’s a strong female lead, and she’s going to stand up to her father and give him a what for. But basically, the telegraphing at the beginning of the film was just a bit much. It was a little too on the nose for me. The fact that the film ended up being primarily this conversation between Marcos and his semi-estranged daughter was not a coincidence. Somebody thought they were being clever at the beginning.

I’ve been noticing throughout some of these movies how dull the selection of opera arias can be. We get a lot of “Nessun dorma.” Just an unbelievable amount of “Nessun dorma.” In 2025, I watched a documentary about the artist Ai Weiwei and how he was directing his first production of Turandot, and within that I made sure to clock my disappointment in the repetition of “Nessun dorma,” considering it’s an entire opera and there are more pieces than that. When you have a documentary so incredibly specific, you’re going to appeal to opera fans, and those opera fans, true opera fans, are not going to be surprised or inspired by your use of one of the most overdone and oversung arias. Here, the same could be said for “O mio babbino caro,” except it doesn’t just sit in the background to color the concept that Marcos is a lover of the arts. It actually ties into the plot, and we see sort of a modern-day Gianni Schicchi playing out. That felt just a little too on the nose for me.

That, combined with some really stunted dialogue, does the film no favors. There’s a scene where Willem Dafoe has to deliver lines regarding his marriage to his wife and Sofia’s mother that I thought was poorly written. Dafoe, who normally seems like he’s able to read through just about anything, even sounded like he was saying words instead of acting in some of these really rough lines of dialogue. I’ll admit that, like with some films, there are accessibility gaps for me where it was harder to follow because there’s no audio description. But from what I could gain out of it, there was really nothing magnetic that pulled me in. There isn’t an aspect of this film that I was rooting for, liked or enjoyed, or something I thought was unique, added new flavor or spice, or brought something to the table that gave me any indication that if audio description came around, I could see myself flipping this from Rotten to Fresh.

I’ve done that once or twice before, but I’ve always looked at those films and seen prospects, seen the possibility within them. Here, I see nothing. There’s nothing here that makes me believe the simple addition of accessibility would cause me to want to recommend the film. I just thought it was incredibly obvious. I didn’t think it was very good. I don’t think it’s Willem Dafoe’s best performance. I think the dialogue is stunted, and I think the screenplay is overcooked and then buried by the decision to select an aria that far too well defines the film itself. Vic Carmen Sonne, in normal circumstances, probably is not a bad actress, but unfortunately the script doesn’t do enough for her here. The majority of her scenes are with Willem Dafoe, who is trying to make at least something tangible out of his performance, so it’s hard to notice anybody else in the cast during his interactions, whether it’s Sofia, any of the other guests at the party, or even those who work for Marcos within his household.

My score has no number because I found the accessibility gaps left me with an inability to actually throw down a specific number that I could comfortably place alongside other movies ranked above and below it. There’s a bit of a range in which it could be. I don’t think The Birthday Party is so bad that I would rank it below a 3, but I also have a feeling it wouldn’t even be above a 5, and 6 and up for me is Fresh. So somewhere between a 3 and a 5 is where this probably lands. Audio description would define that, but I feel like it has no shot of being Fresh. Despite the presence of Willem Dafoe, this is one birthday party not worth RSVPing to.

Rotten