Shrooms

No matter what you position on the matter the fact is recreational drug use, especially among the young is not going away any time soon. The one thing that can be said about the ‘stoner’ group is they make great fodder for film makers everywhere. In forgone days the town drunk offered many a laughs as he stumbled from one situation to the next. It would seem that drunks are passé; the new in inebriate is the drug user. When every a film needs some comic relief thrown in a stoner. If you are writing a script for a flick and require someone to get killed off, the chronic drug abuser is perfect. Even the ratings people don’t seem to mind their demise on screen. Having a group of young people doing drugs also opens things up for another sure fire crowd pleaser, gratuitous nudity. Just look at any horror film. The stoner and his ultra high girlfriend go off to have sex. Before they can fully enjoy the afterglow of sex and drugs, bam, the killer is right there. Most films make reference to this trend but now there is a flick based completely on drug abuse, ‘Shrooms’. The film is directed by Paddy Breathnach and written by Pearse Elliott. While both have screen credits to their names already this is an initial foray into the horror genre.

On the surface this may seem like just another slash and dash flick the likes of which you have seen countless times before. I was pleasantly surprised that Breathnach and Elliott went beyond the over used format and made an honest attempt at a variation on the hackney horror standard. The film is far from perfect but it was different. Horror has been so diluted as a genre that looking back at the stream of pre-Halloween flicks I reviewed a few months back the killers and victims have become a blur. In this film the particulars are able to stand out. The script by Elliott does not go down the well trod road of having the drug addled kids deserve their ghastly fate. Instead he shows that mayhem can be random and even unwarranted. Sure the kids in question were looking for the best high of their lives but nothing in the story suggests that they got what was coming to them. They are kind of dumb for wanting to travel across an ocean just to get some unknown plant for a buzz. They are not malicious or mean spirited as many horror flick victims are, they are just toners. Elliott’s focus is a worse case scenario for misspent youth. Some of the kids involved can be considered obnoxious but no more so than anyone in a self adsorbed youthful clique. There is a counterbalance of a pretty cheerleader type thrown in just to break the usually stereotype. His script is more psychological than visceral in nature. There is an uncertainly as to what is real and what is just a manifestation of a bad trip. A horror flick that is open to interpretation is something in itself.

There is not a lot of Irish horror flicks. It just doesn’t seem to be a genre that their cinematic community is interested in. Breathnach has the rare opportunity to help set the standards for Irish horror and does a reasonable job of it. The film is a departure from all the American slasher flicks proliferating on the DVD racks across our nation. Since digital cameras and editing software has made it possible to create a horror flick on the cheap everybody seems to have joined in the quest to be the next George Romero. What Breathnach was able to do is take aspects of American Indy horror, mix in some of the more psychological Asian horror and create Irish horror. As he has mentioned in an interview there is more dread than red in this film. He wants to pull in the minds of the audience instead of just turning their stomachs. The characters are too one dimensional to really make this work but it is an honest initial effort in the genre. Breathnach also moves away from the currently always present torture room scene. Asian horror is often dependent on the menace of technology. Here the characters are placed in a remote wooded setting. This is real old school, tried and true. This wooded setting is perfectly in line with many Celtic folk tales and myths. The way he shoots the film reinforces the ambiguity of what is real and what is hallucinated. His use of the camera is stylistic but doesn’t sacrifice the story for something slick looking. He gets the emotional tone across without giving into the temptation of being ‘artsy’.

The film opens with what could be stock footage from the horror video library. You all know the scenes, a frighten girl running in the woods, knurly hands gripping a bloody ax and the every popular jumpy image of maggots wiggling around. Tara (Lindsey Haun) and her friend Lisa (Maya Hazen) are on a plane excited about their vacation. They are there with some college friends to visit Ireland. A local there, Jake (Jack Huston) has told them he knows the spot where the best psychedelic mushrooms grow. He assures his new American friends this will be the trip of a lifetime. There two friends Troy (Max Kasch) a Jason Mewes look a like, and stoner jock Bluto (Robert Hoffman) discusses the impending fungal high. Bluto is afraid of brain damage but Jay, I mean Troy, assures him that steroids already did that for him. Okay, side by side they do look like Jay and Silent Bob. Another in the group, Holly (Alice Greczyn) is playfully flirtatious with Troy much to the chagrin of Bernie (Sean McGinley). Not only can Jake lead the group to the growing area of the fabled magic mushrooms he can provide the best natural setting for taking them. That setting just happens to be in the middle of remote woodland. Does anyone else see more than a few flaws to this idea? Have any of these kids ever seen ‘Deliverance’ or any horror flick for that matter? Once the mushrooms have been located and ingested the terror is ready to start. They are apparently hunted and attacked by a group of people a few chromosomes short of a genome. One by one the stones are killed off.

The film isn’t bad as a first time horror flick for the writer and director. They work very well together and managed to execute, no pun intended, their vision for this film. There is still a need to break further away from some of the standard shots used here. It was refreshing to watch a movie that did not require several hundred gallons (or liters as it were) of stage blood. Both director and actor are very talented and well worth watching. This film is above the pack even with the inherent flaws. Magnolia Home Entertainment is great at bringing these lesser known Indy flicks to the American public. The fun thing about films like this is there is a sense of experimentation. With this in mind this is a worth while film.

Posted 02/08/08