Director: Paddy Breathnach (yes, really)
Writer: Pearce Elliot
Actual Tagline: “Get Ready to Get Wasted.”
Shrooms is a little Irish jig of a darkly-trying-very-hard drug movie directed by Paddy Breathnach and written by Pearce Elliot, strangely released initially in Russia in 2007. The completely unmentionable cast includes actors and actresses that look vaguely like other famous actors and actresses:
Lindsey Haun as the overly-complicated female lead Tara who resembles a not-snaggle-toothed Kirsten Dunst (aka, Kirsten “Dunce”);
Jack Huston as Tara’s brooding Irish-ish boyfriend Jake (a chromosomally-challenged-looking, unfunny and not Shakesperean hybrid of Russell Brand and Orlando Bloom);
Max Kasch as Troy (Jason “P.U.s” – because you need at least one character that looks like someone from a Kevin Smith movie if you want to make a movie about stoners … preferably one that wears a hat);
Maya Hazen as the vaguely Asian girl Lisa that everyone keeps saying has breast implants but really just looks like a pre-pubescent Tia Carrera (Tea “Whore-era”);
Alice Greczyn as “the hairy one that is not any of the other female characters,” Holly;
Robert Hoffman as Bluto, the horniest, skinniest steroid addict ever … and the only person in the history of the world outside of Popeye named “Bluto.”
The most shocking news about this movie is, it was actually nominated twice for the Irish equivalent of the academy awards: “Best Director;” “Best Film.” (Did I mention someone farted on someone in it?)
The movie starts out with a yawning ramble through the 10 different companies that invested in it, including Magnet Pictures, Capitol and Ingenious Film Partners. Normally I would not fixate on the pre-opening credits, but in this case, it lasted for (what felt like) five minutes*, leaving me to wonder, “How many partners does it take to make a film set in rural Northern Ireland about a drug trip gone bad? And how did they find so many film companies to stand behind them in support of a movie that advertises (whether falsely or truly) that Ireland’s potentially biggest contribution to the world is its hallucinogenic mushroom supply?”
Once the actual story of the movie begins, after we learn two important plot elements through Tara’s denim-encrusted journal with a kitty on it – that she is taking her American friends to visit her quasi-boyfriend in Ireland and that she is deathly afraid of doing drugs – we immediately feel the explosive chemistry between two of the main characters – Bluto and Troy.** After appropriate amounts of guy-on-guy baggage claim conveyer belt wrestling and as little character development as possible, we’re out of the airport and deep into our introduction to non-stop, totally accurate Irish culture.
As they leave the airport in Jake’s off-white van, a ghetto-fied “Mystery Machine,” they manage to hit what appears to be a dirty unicorn (thanks to a lack of special effects budget, or perhaps an attempt at wise directing decisions, we never see exactly what it is) and bludgeon it to death to put it out of its misery. This introduces troll-like people that Jake refers to as the “indigenous people***;” they creep out of the woods as if smelling the delicious stench of dead mythological creature and babble incoherently while wielding filthy, rusty axes and drooling. In Ireland, the indigenous people eat these dirty unicorns for breakfast, lunch and dinner, as explained expertly by Jake, and if you hit one, you are supposed to give it to them to keep the peace.****
As we discover later on in the film, these inarticulate indigenous people can also be infuriating smartasses; they invite a panicked and running Lisa into their cabin and tell her they have a phone, which she complains doesn’t work. They proceed to mutter the only thing you can understand them say during the entire movie – “You asked if we had a phone … you didn’t ask if it worked.” I’m not quite sure how these mutants can be both brain damaged and able to comprehend the definitions of subtle phrases and linguistic nuances, but I’m guessing these idiot savants would also really appreciate one of my favorite comedic bits –
Man 1: “Do you know what time it is?”
Man 2: “Yes!”
After offering up a unicorn sacrifice, you are supposed to walk away casually as if nothing happened and start hunting for mushrooms in the woods in order to stock the drug party you have planned for the next day while setting up a campsite. However, first you need to leave your cell phones in the car; because drunk dialing is okay, but calling someone while tripping out on hallucinogens is a faux pas from which you might never recover.
The sextet leaves the van, and we discover the answer to an important question as Tara gives a couple very important party favors to Holly and Lisa – “If you were a chick, what would you be disappointed NOT to have while tripping out on shrooms?” Tampons and candy … that can later be fed to little mutant rat boys you encounter in the swamp in order to gain their friendship and trust.
With so many Irish supporters working day and night to make this film happen (albeit in Russia), you’d think someone would be able to find a real, out-of-work Irish actor to play the only main Irish character, Jake. However, despite being born in London, Jack Huston can’t even do a British guy doing an Irish accent, thus leaving the ghost stories he later tells around the campfire which are integral to the plot unintelligible. Fortunately, Jake somewhat enunciates all you really need to know: “massacred beyond belief;” “kid living with the feral dog” and “three-inch steel blade.”
Unfortunately, aside from some inadvertent unicorn poaching, the magic of the movie doesn’t truly begin until Tara – the drug-fearing, rule-abiding one of the bunch – decides the time is nigh for her to stop acting like a total priss and ends up taking and almost overdosing on what she later refers to as the “heroin of shrooms.” This mishap largely occurs because she is out of earshot when Jake describes that the mushrooms with the little black dots on them are Death’s Head Fungi and off limits to responsible trippers. As he explains, “Your heart explodes, and all of your lungs and kidneys.”***** When Troy asks what happens if you live, Jake basically implies that you become an ESP-infested superhero that can talk to the dead, tormented by your own demons. So, basically, Death Shrooms are the Red Bull of fungi … they give you wings! Unless, as we find out later, you’re jumping off the balcony of an abandoned insane asylum, and then, you still break your legs.
And now a break for A List of Essential Irish Definitions You Will Need to Know to Understand Important Concepts in Shrooms:
- “Dogging:” Essentially, voyeurism. The premise is that couples in Ireland “park” in the woods and flash their lights if they are open to having a stranger watch them and eventually participate. According to the American girls in Shrooms, this practice is “vile,” but in the end, not as vile as what goes on in “convent school,” which they attended.
- “E.S.P:” Early signs of this gift include knowing your boyfriend will attempt to save your life if you almost die when he is a few feet away from you and knowing that your horny 18-year old guy friend (Bluto) will follow a naked woman into the woods at night, and that she will kill him with the knife she happens to be carrying.
If we learn nothing else from Bluto’s ominous disappearance, it’s that when the shrooms call, you stop looking for your friend and get in on the action. How many times are you going to be in Ireland in the rain digging for drugs with your friends and some weird vaguely Irish guy you probably met on the Internet?
A horror movie of either good or bad quality has to set itself up for a sequel. However, this one pretty much ties itself up by feeding you a fast-paced, very convenient twist in the last 30 seconds, delivered in flash-backs … or IS it a twist?
The benefit of a drug movie that is also a horror movie is, you’ll never know if it was real, or all one extended trip. My suggested sequel title is Shrooms 2: Use of Deadly Spores.
3 Actually Decent Filmic Elements about Shrooms:
- The telescopic lens effect used to distinguish between Tara’s premonitions and reality.
- The director’s occasional use of the power of suggestion instead of pure gore to make scene more effectively frightening.
- A fairly good completely instrumental, REAL musical score that fits the horror genre very well.
In a particular scene, Holly and Lisa master the art of irreverence as they call each other out on their shortcomings after Holly is convinced that Lisa’s boyfriend Bluto was peeping on her tame make-out sessions with Troy.
Lisa: “What, you think he wanted to peek at your hairy ‘stache?”
Holly: “You know what, bitch? At least my tits are real.”
Lisa: “Ohhh … you wanna play like that, Chewbacca? ‘Cause I will rip that hair right off you.”
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Footnotes
*Is this the director’s cut?
**PLOT SPOILER – Unfortunately, their girlfriends Lisa and Holly have accompanied them on the trip, and they are never able to consummate their angsty, testosterone-infused love.
***You know, the indigenous people of Ireland … the ones that are not Colin Farrell or Liam Neeson or in famous rock bands … and that don’t live in the only cities most people know about, i.e., Dublin and sometimes (but not always) Belfast.
****Leprechauns are more of a desserty dish, like Spotted Dick or Bread Pudding.
*****ALL of your lungs?! I thought I only had six …
****** “Bluto Needs a Steroid Intervention … or to Join a Boy Band in which His Highlights Are Appreciated.”
Reviewed by Julia Rogers
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