Shrooms

Young, fit, previously-TV actors are running around a misty forest rife with hallucinatory mushrooms and a local ghost story. It would be lazy of one to assume that this might make for a cliché-ridden teen-fest of a horror flick. Alas, Shrooms is not an argument to the contrary.

American student Tara (Lindsay Haun) aka Sappy Girl Next Door, is hoping that eating mushrooms in Ireland with oddly-accented Jake (Jack Huston) aka Hunky Male Lead, will make him love her. Stock horror pals tag along and we have Long Haired Sensitive Boy, Unpopular Hippy Girl, Thick Jock and Generic Hot Girl in a remote forest tripping themselves silly.

Not one for the Irish Tourist Board, the only clues to the setting appear to be ‘indigenous people’ (rednecks with Irish accents) and a resident horror story involving religious sadists with big sticks.

The set up is too rapid and therefore weak: we don’t give two hoots about the group dynamics, and a tongue-in-cheek approach could have saved this from schlock territory. As it is, the dialogue is the kind of nonsense you’d only appreciate if you were on ‘shrooms yourself, but the film does pick up some pace and runs along quite well towards the end.

There are a few good jumps (and a scene to put you off dogging for life), but the glimpses of what lurks in the bushes are too choppy to snag interest and we never really cared about our identikit main players anyway.

The DVD extras include deleted scenes that were deleted for good reason, alternate endings and cast interviews, but it's not nearly enough to convince that this is the best horror film to spend 84 minutes of your life on.

Released on DVD on 5th May 2008 by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

Written by Amy Swales.