Dir. Paddy Breathnach, 2006, Ireland, 90 mins
Cast: Lindsey Haun, Jack Huston, Max Kasch, Maya Hazen, Alice Greczyn
Review by Joyce Dundas
With a cast of relative unknowns and a tale of a group of young friends pursued by things that go bump in the woods, this film is likely to elicit comparisons to The Blair Witch Project. It does owe a lot to the slow-burning tension and real jump out your seat moments in that film, but Shrooms is no carbon copy. It is not a perfect example of the slasher genre, but it has an original hook and some genuine Hitchcockian moments.
A group of six friends go camping in the Irish wilderness to partake of the eponymous magic mushrooms. Jake (Huston) the handsome enigmatic one, is an expert on the 'shrooms' properties and warns them of the “death's head” variety which if by some miracle it doesn't kill you, might give you the ability to see into the future, hallucinate and even commune with the dead.
It goes without saying that it would be the sweet, naïve one among them, Tara (Haun), who can't resist this tantalising little fungus and immediately goes into a convulsion. She is given the kiss of life by Jake, whom she already has a crush on, but is obviously seriously shaken and afterwards starts to hallucinate.
Tensions are already running high between the other four in the group. Sexual jealousy and bitchiness lead to the couples falling out, a situation which is only exacerbated by the mushrooms' influence. And the bickering adds to Tara's growing panic that something bad is about to happen.
After Jake tells a ghost story about the murderous happenings at a deserted institution close by and says that there are rumoured to be psychos haunting the woods, the horror really begins. The friends find themselves isolated after their mobile phones disappear and are picked off one by one. It is fun that there is not just one reaper in the woods, but the addition of a Deliverance style in-bred yokel story is very silly and adds little to the plot.
Technically the shocks are very well-handled using a mixture of slow and fast motion and sudden jump cut close ups of horrifically murderous faces. There is also good use of the bleak, cold, woodland location and washed out colour.
In the middle of the movie the pace slows dramatically between the slasher moments though. There is far too much footage of the victims running through the woods shouting each others' names. However, the final act in the deserted institution is tense and the film is modern enough not to look like an old-fashioned, woman-in-peril story, the guys here are just as menaced and scared to death. The acting is competent, if not entirely commendable. Huston and Haun do their best with what lines they have.
As with all the best modern horrors there is a twist at the end but fans of this genre will doubtless see it coming long before the pay off.
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