Henry Primo’s turning a suh-weet 16! And thanks to his wealthy parents, he’s throwing quite the rager at a local motel, complete with live band, swimming pool and rented rooms. Maybe — just maybe — Henry (Randy Ackerman) will finally get that cute Becky (Laura Sellers) into the (possibly bedbug-ridden) sack.

Or perhaps Henry’s drink will be drugged, causing him not to pass out, but to slaughter seven classmates. After all, the movie under examination is called Party Crasher: My Bloody Birthday, suggesting creator Mark Mason (2003’s The Prize Fighter) couldn’t pick between two titles, so he used both.

Fast-forward 15 years, the now-obese adult Henry (Mason himself) and his Hannibal Lecter half-face mask are discharged from a high-security loony bin to his parents’ home. They’ve “spared no expense” to turn a wing of their abode into a replica of the mental hospital for Henry’s comfort. Because he no longer speaks, Henry communicates solely via pen and paper, like when he’s hungry and writes, “BIG MACS.” His mother asks, “How many?” and he responds with the number “8.”

Perhaps his atrocious dietary requests fuel his ESP abilities? Yes, Henry also possesses the power of ESP. It never comes into play.

Well, Mom and Dad must have skimped on something in the security features, because police are called to investigate a message left on the now-married Becky’s front door … in his own poop: “BECKY WHY DID DO THIS ME.” So many words scrawled so large must have required a great deal of fecal matter, but remember: eight Big Macs. The math tracks. (Plus, this thing was shot in Tulsa, in a state with an obesity rate near 40%.)

Anyway, everyone’s on edge until Henry saves a little girl from a dog mauling and all is forgiven. Naturally, his former classmates — well, the surviving ones — decide to bestow him with an award of courage at the high school reunion. This goes over great until Kizay (Tom Wescott), the Mickey-slipper from the jinxed birthday party, is able to surreptitiously attach jumper cables to Henry’s wheelchair, shocking him into a hulking monster of rage that no amount of all-beef patties can pacify.

You can’t blame Mason for trying. But you can blame him for failing. He’s not just the “star” of Party Crasher: My Bloody Birthday, but also its producer, editor, writer, director and, somehow, second-unit director. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Through camcorder footage, Home Movie follows the foibles of the Poe family from Halloween to Easter. Shortly after moving to their wooded Connecticut home, Claire (celebrated soap star Cady McClain) and David (Adrian Pasdar, House of Frankenstein 1997) notice their children (real-life siblings Austin and Emily Joy Williams) aren’t acting like their usual selves.

Like how, you ask? Like throwing rocks. Like not using their words. Like … well, as Claire records on her video diary, “Yesterday morning, the 25th of December … Christmas … Jack and Emily crucified the family cat.” Ho-ho-holy shit, kids!

That’s small stuff compared to the rest. Although Shutter Island actor Christopher Denham’s first feature as writer and director breaks no ground, especially for the found-footage subgenre, he does two things really right. The first is how differently Claire and David — respectively, a child psychologist and a pastor — approach possible solutions to their offspring’s disturbing behavior: She hopes to prescribe an answer; he spritzes holy water and shouts commands at imagined demons.

And the second is how Denham doesn’t wuss out on taking his established dark path to its logical end, making the down and dirty Home Movie mean-spirited in the best of ways. The last 15 minutes are something else, with a final shot dripping in hand-wringing eeeevilllll. It almost makes up for Pasdar’s Annoying Dad with No Off Switch routine, what with his silly voices, cartoon accents and more fart talk than the annual convention of the American College of Gastroenterology. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.