Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Movie review: Shrooms

 
 A group of college friends take a trip to Ireland to visit Tara’s boyfriend, Jake, who will take them on a camping shrooming trip. In a beautiful wooded mountain setting, things get strange when Tara ingests a particularly potent strain of mushroom which causes, among other things, premonitions. Are they really being stalked, and are the psycho locals really escaped mental patients, or is it all paranoia and a bad trip?

Lindsey Haun (Tara), Jack Huston (Jake), Max Kasch (Troy), Maya Hazen (Lisa), Alice Greczyn (Holly), Robert Hoffman (Bluto).

First the online summary mentioning sexy college kids and a gory slaughter-fest. There isn’t much of a sexy undertone here, nor is there an abundance of blood and guts. Group of friends and interesting thriller would have  been better descriptions.

A little slow to start before getting just plain confusing, dark, and miserable looking. Jake is the guide for the group, knows all about shrooms, and is very very safe about tripping. He is also the first one to hit the paranoia button and start hiding from everyone, can’t control his trip, and becomes worthless when things start going wrong. Big plot hole there for me.  But, I did enjoy the plot twist at the end that I see so many reviews complain about.

Aside from that, I was impressed with the acting. In a cold, wet, muddy, miserable place the actors still came through with emotion.

What failed this film was the camera work. Many shots were just to dark. Even worse were the snapshots which were so quick at times you couldn’t tell what you were seeing. Action scenes were bad too, with excessive camera movement and jerky shots. The camera was just in motion far too much and without it I think the film would have been much better.

This is a true middle of the road horror thriller that had the potential to be much better with decent camera work.

No nudity but a fair amount of foul language and adult concepts including implied sexual scenes make this one okay for teens and above.

Released: 2007
Reviewed: 5.8.19
Star rating: 3 out of 5
Genre: Horror, Slashers & Serial Killers, Mystery, Comedy

copyright ©2019 Dave Riedel

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