Cinema review
Directed by Paddy Breathnach
Starring Lindsey Haun, Jack Huston, Max Kasch
Release 16th November 2007

‘Shrooms’ is slang for mushrooms – in particular, those of the “magic” kind. This is what a group of five American students come to the Irish countryside to sample. However, what starts out as a night of drug induced hallucinations soon turns ugly when each tourist begins to die under mysterious circumstances…

Shrooms begins in bizarre fashion by asking the viewer to believe that a group of five youthful Americans would travel all the way to Ireland simply so that they can get wasted on some Celtic foliage. Still, if you can get past this ridiculous proposition, the movie soon starts to weave a hallucinatory spell that includes a talking cow, a spooky local legend about ghostly backwoods killers and some truly weird death scenes.

For the bulk of Shrooms’s running time none of this appears to make one iota of sense, but it does keep you glued to your seat thanks to a constant supply of well timed jumps and great performances from the largely unknown American cast. Special praise must go to leading lady Haun, whose character takes ill early on in the film after digesting a poisonous strain of mushroom, but quickly emerges as one of the genre’s most interesting women-in-peril.

Director Breathnach also wears his inspirations on his sleeve with the movie borrowing elements and plot twists from such distinctly American titles as The Blair Witch Project, Friday the 13th and the more recent Cabin Fever. Yet the Irish setting (and the three indigenous characters who do pop up) still feel authentic, while the woodland locale quickly becomes every bit as threatening as that which overshadows Camp Crystal Lake.

Moreover, while some will no doubt criticise Shrooms for trying hard to look and feel like a Hollywood picture, it should be noted that the film’s dark atmosphere of rural gothic fear owes every bit as much to Hammer Horror as it does to Eli Roth.

Sure to be destined for cult success, and with a love it or hate it final twist (be warned, this is not Sixth Sense sophistication but something altogether more schlocky), Shrooms is as illogical as it is intense. It is also indicates, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that giving your mobile phone to a near-stranger to “hold on to” is never the wisest idea before you are about to set up camp in the middle of nowhere…Calum Waddell

VERDICT: 8/10
Shrooms is the best argument against doing drugs since the dead baby scene in Trainspotting.