REVIEW: Shrooms
Feb. 11There are few things in this world that are more terrifying than a bad mushroom trip, as I can confirm from firsthand experience. Unfortunately Irish horror film Shrooms, which is about a group of teenagers high out of their minds and trapped in the forest with a deranged killer after them, does not capitalize on this fear. Shrooms ultimately ends up being another mediocre low-budget slasher that no one will remember a year from now.
Shrooms' maniacal monk hunts his next victim.
A Bad Trip
The film begins with several American college students who go camping in the woods of Ireland where there is an abundance of wild psilocybin mushrooms. Hoping to spend their entire vacation in a hallucinatory stupor (which isn't accurate being that you must take shrooms 7 days apart in order to experience anything at all), their plans for fun are spoiled as the film's central character Tara accidentally eats a deathcap shroom which turns her senses inside out, giving her nightmarish visions that reveal who will die next in her party--sort of like Christopher Walken's character in The Dead Zone.
While not a complete waste of time, Shrooms could have been much better. My biggest problem with the movie is the fact that when the characters are supposed to be on shrooms, you can barely even tell. There are so many missed opportunities here that could have and should have shown the misshapen hell that reality can melt into when enduring a bad trip. Sure, there's a talking cow at one point, but only for a moment and this hardly captures the type of assault on your senses a shroom trip can be.
Don't eat it! Don't eat it! Meh, who cares...
Sadly, this shot of Maya Hazen is about the only skin shown in the whole movie.
Just Say 'No'
What this all boils down to is the film doesn't take any real risks in terms of what's being shown on the screen. Aside from the fact that nothing cool happens as the characters are tripping, the film does have a few redeeming qualities. The acting in the film is surprisingly decent and the cinematography is extremely well done, such as the fog-saturated woods which are eerily shot, but in the end, the movie's positive qualities are few and far between.
Shrooms' inaccuracies may seem like a stupid thing to go on and on about, but this film is truly little more than a half-assed The Blair Witch Project, with drug references, a handful of uninspired death scenes, and some incoherent Irish hillbillies thrown into it. The gore is lacking. We don't get to see any boobs. I could go on. Another thing that would have helped this film work with such a shoddy script is if it didn't take itself seriously, which it does. Shrooms is unfortunately devoid of any humor.
If you're in the mood for a gore flick with drugs and humor, you're far better off watching the slightly superior The Tripper, which is similarly about a group of stoners in the middle of the forest with an axe-wielding killer on the loose.
Terror Rating: 1 out of 5
Originality: 2 out of 5
Level of Gore: 2 out of 5
Overall Rating: 2.5 out of 5
Recommendations: The Tripper, The Blair Witch Project
Lesson #1 learned in Shrooms: never insert your pecker into a vehicle if you can't see who's inside it.
Comments
Maya Hazen? More like Maya Pantsaregettingtight
You think so? I kind of like my women with some extra fat on them, but even I thought she looks a little thin.
I thought some of the images of the monk were really cool but I wanted to scream at the end. Way to copy every other thriller. lame...
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