Shrooms

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.

Young people experience terrifying hallucinations after consuming hallucinogenic mushrooms. Okay, we get that.

But the development of the scenario systematically alternates between hallucination and what is supposed to be happening in reality.

So much so that we soon don't know very well what is actually happening, versus what is the product of drug-induced hallucination.

The movie editing does not offer a link between the images, which follow one another without transition.

The result is pure hogwash. Watching that movie is a total waste of time. I gave 5 stars nonetheless, since I consider that the actors are not bad. The scenario is bad. And the editing is worse. Far worse.

i'd personally give this film 5.7/10.

This film is not a fantastic film, I'm sure by viewing most of the other "reviews" you can tell. But basically THE BOTTOM LINE IS this film is fantastic to watch if you're a teen (14-17?) sat at home with your mates, smoking some weed. otherwise the slightly bland acting and story line engulfs the fact that its a film about KIDS IN THE WOODS TAKING SHROOMS!, i mean come on, it has to be watched at least once doesn't it?

Not a great plot, but the fact that it's a bit of a crazy film could make up for it if you are in the right state of mind. I wouldn't recommend watching this film if your looking for a serious type of "oh my god I've defecated my pants" film.

I cannot remember the last time a horror movie irritated me to this degree...SHROOMS is about a group of American friends (who actually don't appear to like each other much) who go to Ireland for vacation. They're obviously spoiled brats because the only thing on their mind when they're in freakin' IRELAND is getting their hands on some magic mushrooms ASAP. They meet up with some Irish friend (who is obviously British faking a bad Irish accent) that the lead girl (played by the creepy little girl from JC's VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED--the rest of her face has now caught up with her forehead, thank goodness) is creaming over. They immediately go camping in the woods and searching for shrooms. VotD girl gnaws on a mushroom that the Irish-but-British guy specifically said not to eat because it's poisonous. Soon she starts flipping out and having flash-forwards about her friends dying. It's up to her to save her friends from the ominous backwoodsmen, the creepy black-hooded ghost that pops up between people legs and/or above their heads, and the obvious overused plot twists in the script.

It seems like every line of dialogue spoken by the obnoxious 20-somethings in this movie features the word "shrooms." And you thought JUNOisms were annoying! If you took a sip of your Irish coffee every time someone in this movie said "shrooms," you'd be dead before the first jump scare.

The only good thing about SHROOMS is the movie poster, which features a skull shaped out of SHROOMS in the moonlight. Cool!

Shrooms is one of those movies you should already know everything about before even watching it, just based on the premise. A group of friends experiencing mushrooms trips in the wilderness, turns into a deadly fiasco indistinguishable from reality. A standard run-of-the-mill campy horror flick, complete with a horror movie starter-set cast; the smart and relatable lead female character, the annoying idiot jock, the goofball stoner, the b*tch, the outcast female, and the handsome nice guy (who also is occasionally, like in this case, the foreigner).

The movie has good, maybe even great moments. I especially like the 2 "locals," their characters aren't new to this genre, but they're fun and quite creepy and add an interesting flare to the movie. Some of the effects are well done, and the story is entertaining enough to keep you interested, and the very end gives the movie a nice touch.

However, the movie is riddled with clichés, the predictable jumps scares, and the gore effects aren't as good as they could have been. There's a part towards the end of the movie where they had so many chances to make to good, but it turned out rather boring.

Everything else is pretty standard, nothing special or particularly bad about the acting, directing, or screenplay.

In short, it's an average run-of-the-mill horror flick. If you're looking for something amazing, this isn't it, but if you're bored or are just a horror fan looking to enlarge your viewing collection, it's definitely worth a watch.

My favorite scene: The scene in the home of the two locals, I love the dialogue between them, very unsettling.