Review of Shrooms (2007) by Charles F — 29 Aug 2012

Is it silly? Yes. But it's not all bad. The story takes off slowly, has a promising middle, and quickly devolves into supernatural tommyrot. The build up is the best part in this reviewers opinion and it's all thanks to the ghost story that decorates the main plot.

A small group of intimate friends take off on a vacation to Ireland for a camping trip that includes consuming copious amounts of psychedelic mushrooms and roasting by the fire. The protagonist, a cute named Tara (Lindsey Haun), is a Catholic school girl away from home for the first time, grateful to be away from the watchful eye of her father (and ripe for some latent rebellion as well).

From Tara's point-of-view the whole idea is to rendezvous with Jake (Jack Huston) whom she met once before and clearly has a thing for, considering she's travelled all the way to Ireland just to see the guy.

She is in good company, for the most part anyway. The cast features a jock on steroids oddly named Bluto (Robert H.) who has a libidinous and perverse sex-drive and sports ornamental brass knuckles with D-E-A-T-H inscribed on the front; the handsome and charming love interest Jake; a long haired hippie Troy (Max K.

) who travels with a duffle bag with mushroom shaped patches on the outside and dates an impossibly gorgeous girlfriend Holly (Alice G.) and supposedly he's a martial arts fanatic but with zero skills or purpose for that matter (other than to play the part of the stoner-type without which the writers clearly thought there could be no film - right? in other words, he's a total clichà (C).

As are the other girls. Now, before the movie descends into a cesspool of violence and gore, and a plot that makes precious little sense, there is at the heart of this film a great ghost story narrated by Jake, just like the camp counselors of my youth - also, he's the sole Irishman of the group, which gives him credibility in the eyes of the foreigners.

He tells the legend of an abandoned boarding school where the men in charge are exceedingly cruel and malicious rogue priests with a penchant for torturing young delinquents or worse. Soon everything falls apart and becomes completely nonsensical.

The Catholic girl, who never before had taken so much as an aspirin, reacts to her newfound freedom in a way that is believable - at least at the level of psychological realism - and doesn't just take shrooms like the others but after hearing Jake the handsom young Irishman speak of the hallucinogenic (and potential lethal) properties of a particular native mushroom, decides to try one for herself when nobody is looking and immediately goes into convulsions and shock.

When she finally comes to she realizes she has gained prophetic powers of the worst kind imaginable. This, ladies and gentleman, is the high point of the movie (or is it the low point?). From here on out nothing makes sense anymore.

For starters, last time I checked, hallucinogens - esp. mushrooms - last 4-6 hours. In the movie, the effects never wear off which makes no sense. Tara's prophetic powers are simply ridiculous. Is it a scary movie? Sure, it has its moments.

If your bored and want to watch a horror flick that isn't all bad, you will find this movie mildly entertaining. There's nothing terribly wrong with the acting, but the film is riddled with clichà (C)s, and it gets worse as the plot progresses.

Seriously, if you're looking for a quality horror flick, look elsewhere. For anybody else with too much time on their hands, dig in.