Shrooms (2007) Reviews

• Unrealized Potential

  Siamois2007-10-29

  I am not surprised by the polarized opinions regarding this movie, although I do think there is a lot of overreaction. Shrooms is simply a decent little movie that seems promising when you first begin to watch it, thanks in great part to solid direction tricks. However, eventually it fails to deliver because of a very, very weak story and a failed attempt at defying genres. When you first start to watch, the movie grabs your attention with what seems like good characters and the remote set is also well showcased. You get some threads of character development and the story flows quickly to introduce the mood thanks to a character recounting a legend and one character consuming mushrooms. Unfortunately, it's at this point that the movie starts going in all directions. Many reviewers seem offended that the movie didn't deliver a given experience which seems to be due to their expectations that this movie would follow a specific formula. Be it a "classic horror tale" or a slasher flick or gore movie. While movie fans would be wise not to make so many assumptions, one must admit there was a failure here by director Breathnach to develop a coherent mood and story. For instance, the character development in this movie leads absolutely nowhere. In fact, many movies which do *not* rely on effective character development other than as a side-dish actually fare better than Shrooms. Yet we can't help but think it was sorely needed here. As well, the movie flirts between psychological horror, action horror and supernatural horror without ever hitting the marks. One can blend ANY genres if it is done effectively. But a mediocre story is much better off sticking to a proved formula. One other fault of this movie is its derivative nature, borrowing tricks from a great many flicks such as Deliverance, Blair Witch and too many slasher flicks to name. Finally, I have no idea if the director attempted a "plot twist" or not but I could see the plot twist almost as the seed was planted. I kept hoping there would be more to it, that it would be misdirection of some kind or that it would be made more explicit but no. The ending offers flashbacks explaining what happened, as if the audience wouldn't be aware of that! So what about the good? Well, the direction is really tight and some scenes, particularly early on, are effective at offering tensed moments. Lindsey Haun is also convincing as Tara. The rest of the cast is really forgettable. None of them are noticeably weak with the exception of Robert Hoffman, who really looked like he didn't belong. I am left wondering if the editing is at fault here. Was a decision made to cut 30, 45 minutes of this movie that might have made it a great film? I certainly think this is possible. Almost none of the scenes felt boring. It just felt like an incomplete experience. Existential horror turned into classic slasher/survival movie midway into production. Director Paddy Breathnach, who is more familiar with edgy comedies, is a welcome breath of fresh air compared to the very boring, repetitive directors who focus on the horror genre. But the screenplay by Pearse Elliott is at fault here.

• Abysmal

  Cujo1082010-05-09

  Six dopes go looking for magic mushrooms in the backwoods of Ireland. While tripping on the shrooms, they encounter someone determined to kill them off and must fight for survival. Awful, awful film! It's a disjointed, achingly dull mess. It feels like there is nothing happening 90% of the time. Watch as the lead runs from a cloaked figure that's anything but scary, then repeat ad nauseum. The editing, intended to be trippy or not, is just pathetic. I hated the characters. They're bitchy and obnoxious to the extreme. Terrible dialogue too, a great example being when two of the girls talk to a third about what she sees in her boyfriend. There are attempts at humor, but they all fall flat. The kills, or lack thereof, are weak. With a film this poor in all other areas, good kills were it's only hope of being anything but a total waste. Alas, we don't get to see half of them, and the others are nothing to write home about. I can't forget the ending, which is just laughable. I haven't been this annoyed with a movie in quite some time. While browsing the DVD section around the time this was released, I had the misfortune of deciding to grab it on an impulse buy. Bad move! I fought the urge to just throw it in the trash, but the urge eventually won out. This thing belongs in a landfill.

• Slasher trying to be different

  dschmeding2007-09-24

  Shrooms basically is a Slasher Movie. 3 couples go to Ireland woods to collect magic mushrooms and trip out. Of course on their way they already meet some strange inhabitants of the woods and it doesn't take long until a creepy story is being told at the campfire which of course is more than just a story. So strange things happen, people start disappearing, silhouettes move through the woods and the creepy story starts to melt into reality. The idea of blurring the lines between reality and imagination is quite nice and works after the horror kicks in along with the effect of the mushrooms. Problem is that the pacing of the movie is damn slow and doesn't really pick up much till the end. So I often looked at my watch since it seemed and eternity. Shrooms is not a bad movie, it has some nice modern elements like the typical washed out colors, some nice tripping ideas like a speaking cow mixing in with the classic campfire story and haunted woods themes. Anyway its hard to be sucked into the movie... it tries to be hypnotic with the trippy visuals and permanent uncertainty of reality and imagination. But it just rides that horse too long and too slow... so when you get the ends twist you already might be too sleepy to care. If you want to see a trippy mix of Evil Dead, Blair Witch Project and High Tension go check it out, but don't expect too much action and gore.

• Woah - bad trip!

  elaine-1052007-08-24

  Six kids head out into the woods in some remote backwater of rural Ireland in order to take magic mushrooms and get off their heads. Given that five of them have flown all the way from America for the occasion (don't they have shrooms in the States?) it's rather unfortunate that they manage to pick woods that are not only peopled by drooling, inbred, axe-wielding halfwits (like Irish zom-com Dead Meat, Shrooms does as much for the tourist trade to Ireland as Hostel does for Slovakia) but also happens to house the crumbling shell of an abandoned borstal for young offenders, which was run by a group of evil, black clad monks – until one of them ate a bowlful of deathshead mushrooms and killed everyone else. Talk about a bad trip… Of course, if I found out I was going to be camping in haunted woods full of looneys, I'd pitch my tent under the first creepy looking tree I found. And once settled in, I would ensure that, like our naïve heroine Tara (Kirsten Dunst lookalike Lindsey Haun) the first thing I did was eat a deathshead mushroom (symptoms: extreme rage and violence, and the ability to communicate with the dead and see premonitions of the future), then, like brainfried jock Bluto (Robert Hoffman), wander off into the forest all by myself in the middle of the night, or, like hippy chick Holly (Alice Greczyn) approach the aforementioned yokel locals for help. Have these people never seen a horror movie before? Still, head-slapping stupidity aside, Shrooms is quite a satisfying little horror film. The central theme of the psychotropic mushrooms allows for a nice blurring between the borders of reality and horror fantasy, with some really quite effective hallucinogenic camera work tipping us nicely into the teenagers' trip. Sure, we've seen a lot of it before (mostly in the Blair Witch Project), and you can see the 'twist' coming from a mile off, in the dark, through a whole bunch of trees – and you'll be unsurprised to hear that it's wielding an axe. Nevertheless, if you're a fan of pick-'em-off horror by numbers and you enjoy jumping out of your seat at regular intervals (or, indeed, if you're partial to talking cows or the rather gorgeous Jack Huston) you'll find plenty to enjoy in this savvy brew of unashamedly retro horror clichés.

• standard slasher movie, with a twist

  kevin_crighton2007-11-23

  Shrooms boiled down to its basic level, is your standard slasher movie. A group of young people head off into a forest in Ireland, to sample the magic mushrooms to get high. While there, they learn of a ghost story involving a local school for boys, run by monks, where young boys suffered horrible fates at the hands of the black-robed monks. Soon, the teens are being stalked in the wood by a black-robed figure... The twist here is that because they have taken magic mushrooms, and are on a high from them, they can't quite be sure if it's all real or not.... It's that twist in the proceedings, that makes the difference here. Without it this would just be your basic, standard slasher movie. However, like most other slashers sadly it's not really scary. It does have a couple of jump shocks as things loom into view and such, but there's not really a scary atmosphere to the movie. The cast do okay, although the characters are a bit clichéd. The script does it's job, but the director, Paddy Breathnach does well with the material. However..... what saves the movie is the ending, which I liked. Not the most original it has to be said, but a good one. It's nice to see a horror movie from Ireland for a change, even if most of the cast are American, although I wish they had made a better one. It's not the worst of the horror movies this year, but sadly it's not one of the better ones.