Shrooms (2007)

Shrooms (2007)
Director: Paddy Breathnach






Okay I just want to say I enjoy this movie. I have no problem with this movie it's the quote they put on the cover that aggravated. Let me introduce you to something reasoning. Alright the quote is "Blair witch on acid" --Lucyvine.zoo Now this annoys me for a number of reasons. First off the kids are not on acid their on shrooms, so why would you reference acid? Acid does not give the same trip as shrooms. Secondly the blair witch is by far one of the dumbest movies ever made, so I wouldn't want to compare them to it. Thirdly only "blair witch on acid" couldn't have put written something partially intelligent about it. Hahaha, I'm sorry but it bugged me and I had to get that out of my system. No offense to the person who wrote it, your quote just doesn't make sense to me. Anyways who gives a shit we must move forward to the review!






Shrooms is a horror mystery with a hallucinagenic journey into the macabre. A group of friends Tara (Lindsey Haun), Jake (Jack Huston), Troy (Max Kasch), Lisa (Maya Hazen), Holly (Alice Greczyn), and Bluto (Robert Hoffman) take a trip to Ireland to take the "Trip of their lives". Instead they get man handled by the shrooms and stalked by some angry backwoods folk, or do they? Jake tells a little tale of kids from a old nearby school being tortured and killed by the sadistic man referred to as the "black brother" (Toby Sedgwick).Now Jake is also the drug expert of the crew and begins informing everyone of what type of shrooms they are searching for. Tara wanders off from her friends and finds the shroom with the black nipple on top of it. There just so happens to be a very poisonous mushroom in season this year that is identical to the one Jake described to everyone. Tara not yet aware that she is about to consume a very deadly shroom swallows that baby. Convulsions and hallucinations insue with no desired end and Tara is really in for the trip of her life. A very bad, very bloody, very out of control, and very permanent trip. She goes to sleep and the next day finds out that Bluto is missing and the rest of her friends are still about to indulge in some brewed shrooms. They all split up in the woods to find Bluto and enjoy their trip, and they start to get knocked off one by one by weirdo's or supernatural forces. Anyways Tara starts getting premonitions about her friends dying and they come true. So all this madness mixed together and you get Shrooms. I, along with my sister Tiara guessed what was going to happen sometime at the beginning of the movie. But I still wouldn't want to call it predictable. It's to much fun to call predictable you just want to go with the flow.






Now a lot of things about this movie tickle my pickle especially the tagline "get ready to get wasted". Just reading that and viewing the awesome cover art makes you want to watch the movie. One of my favorites scenes is Bluto's interaction with the hallicinatory cow. Not only was it well played by Robert, but fucking hilarious! Very much what someone on shrooms would do. I have to address the cinematography Oh. My. God. ! Nanu Segal I raise my glass to you! That location makes me cream in my pants, I would love to go there and camp out. The woods are amoung some of my favorite on screen woods, which are also extremely spooky. If I was in those same woods and someone was telling a ghost story I would definitely be getting shivers up my spine. The actor Toby who plays the black brother has intimidating and alarmingly dysfunctional body language. His movements are some of the most awkward and disembodied I've ever seen. He reminds me of a marionette, like someone is pulling his limbs along disjointedly with strings. It's a lot of fun to watch his performance. There's not that much gore, but they don't slow down on the blood spill. The actors all did a fine job doing what they do. Lindsey Haun's face annoys me so bad. I can't put my finger on it, she's just one of those people I hate looking at. She's a fine actress, I just dislike looking at her face for more then 2 seconds. Also if you haven't caught it Lindsey sings the second song in the credits. It's all about details people, haha. And surprisingly there's no boobs in this movie, but you do get a glimpse of some hairy armpits! Yum! Also for a minute of the movie I could have swore it was a tampon commercial. You'll see what I mean. I'm also a fan of axes as murder weapons it kind of reminded me of Lucky Mckee's The Woods when I thought about it, but it's completely different. I loved the decaying school house they used at the end as well. It's like you can almost smell how musty it looks. When you get that kind of effect from a movie you know it's good stuff.









One thing I wish they would have elaborated on was the intensity of the hallcinatory state the friends were in. They should have showed vivid hallucinations the friends were having while they were being pursued by the murderer. I'm not going to lie, I've done shrooms, and if I was tripping around 2 completely psychotic backwoods bums talking about sleeping with pigs and how sandpapery bull calves tongues are. I'd be fucking freaking out! I mean you really need to feel that level of insanity from that persons perspective, and it would have made the movie that much more frightening. I mean one of the scariest things in the world is having a bad trip, no doubt! One because your no longer in reality while being there. Anything could happen anyone could take advantage of you in that state of mind. You could wander off and get lost, or you could very easily walk into traffic and die if no one was watching you. Or you could be stuck in your head in a very bad place. And very much become scarred for life. There is no end to what could occur while being doped up in a hallucinatory coma. The thought of it really makes me nervous and my palms sweat. So that's the basic reason that I'm highly (no pun intended) attracted to drug-horror movies. They bring something real yet absolutely horrifying to the table. The way I've seen some film makers play with the genre has just blown my mind for instance...The Jackhammer massacre, Cookers, and Side FX. The horror in these movies is a great sense of terror, but the fact of these people being junkies, or taking a mystery drug bought on the street is even scarier. My point is is that movies based on some type of reality are a different type of horror,a much powerful type. Could you imagine if it happened to you? You just keep asking yourself while watching it, "what would I do in that type of situation"?