Annelise Hall as Isabel in the Australian 2026 film The Birthday Trip. Photograph: Badlands View image in fullscreen Annelise Hall as Isabel in the Australian 2026 film The Birthday Trip. Photograph: Badlands Australian film Review The Birthday Trip review – excellent Australian black comedy piles pressure on to privilege This compelling debut feature of James Robert Woods – who wrote, directed, produced, shot and edited it – keeps dialogue centre stage
Luke Buckmaster Fri 31 Jul 2026 17.00 CEST Last modified on Sat 1 Aug 2026 08.26 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google T he success of The Invite as a buzzy watercooler production is a reminder that films don’t need Greek gods or costumed heroes to get people talking: sometimes they just need conversation. It would be great if some of the hype surrounding Olivia Wilde’s terrific chamber piece rubbed off on The Birthday Trip, an admittedly very different kind of black comedy – more tart, and with a greater sense of unease – though the two films share some obvious similarities. To wit: well-off middle-class couples locked in tense bickering, and driven by the film-maker’s clear love of dialogue being the ultimate dramatic catalyst.
The Birthday Trip is the feature debut of James Robert Woods, who wrote, directed, produced, shot and edited it, signalling quite the hyphenate. Set on a luxury farmstay in the New South Wales southern highlands, Woods has cited The White Lotus , Triangle of Sadness and Melancholia as influences – all thematically linked as stories of privilege under pressure. Like them, The Birthday Trip isn’t interested in wealth itself but in entitlement and the power imbalances always lingering just beneath the surface. If this sounds heavy, the staging is disarmingly accessible and character-driven.
The drama revolves around three straight millennial couples who congregate for the eponymous event. The women know each other – they’re old school friends – while the men are meeting for the first time. There’s the documentarian, Angie (Josephine Starte), and Lars (Luke Jacobz), who works in finance; Isabel (Annelise Hall), who has just accepted a job at ABC TV, and Mark (Ben Gerrard), who works in weapons manufacturing; plus an artist, Clare (Nicola Frew), and her culturally savvy (read: opinionated) partner Jim (David Quirk), who writes corporate jingles.
Read more Upon arriving at the farmstay, they’re greeted by its “experience curator”, Felix (Robert Preston), who lives on the property with his wife, Sapphire (Sapphire Blossom). They are a few rungs down the socioeconomic ladder, and the disparities in their wealth and circumstances provide the film’s most obvious avenue for social commentary. Before long, personalities among the partygoers clash; Lars, for instance, relays a story about how he once “sharted” on a golf course to the more mannered Mark, who looks as though he wants to pinch his nose.
Woods makes it clear that something is off, pairing wobbly handheld camerawork with unusually tight framing, which puts us on the edge. There’s also the question of whether he’s encouraging us to jump at shadows. The group at one point are alarmed by the sight of a person chopping wood at night, forcefully and angrily – which is a little unsettling but perhaps neither here nor there.
Complicating things tonally is the intentional innocuousness of much of the dialogue, which flows well – the performances are uniformly strong – and enters spaces which aren’t all that comm…