An action-packed slog

A Disappointing Continuation

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

I was intrigued after reading the back of the DVD for Shrooms as I have experience with many psychedelics including LSD, Psilocybin Mushrooms and DMT. I was curious to see if this drug-infused slasher flick would let me revisit my previous hallucinatory experiences or would it simply be another "Reefer-Madness"-esque gorefest. Sadly the latter was correct.The film follows the standard formula for a teen slasher film. We are introduced to a group of American college students, including but not limited to: The steroid-fuelled jock; the hot girl(s); the stoner; the handsome, intelligent guy and last but not least; the heroine of the story. And yes, they are picked off in that order. The group travel to Ireland to see the beauty of the Irish hills and forests but primary to take "Shrooms" (Psilocybin or magic mushrooms). After a night of camping and hearing tales of how the woods are haunted by murderous spirits, the group awaken to find that the jock has gone missing. So, naturally, the best solution is to take a load of shrooms and go into the woods looking for him. As the trip kicks in, the group become separated and are gradually picked off one by one by the strange, evil spirits in the forest. Are these evil spirits real or are they just part of the trip? That's this film's lure and unfortunately it doesn't draw the audience in all that well.The problem with "Shrooms" is that apart from the hallucination angle, it doesn't have anything special that separates it from other slasher films. Anyone who has seen any of the Friday the 13ths knows exactly what's going to happen in this film. Hell, anyone who's seen any of the Wrong Turn films knows exactly what's going to happen here. The character's are so cardboard that it's impossible to warm to any of them. I felt no fear or adrenaline watching or anticipating them being slaughtered. The fact that they are tripping throughout the whole escapade doesn't even add much to the development of the film. It seems that the shrooms only effect is to confuse and disorientate the individual before they're slaughtered. If the film was less of a slasher and more of a psychological thriller it would have been much more entertaining. If the film focused on the psychological and hallucinatory effects of the shrooms rather than simply hack 'n' slash then I would have been much more satisfied. Unfortunately this is just another run- of-the-mill slasher flick that will long be forgotten of.To conclude, I really cannot see anything positive in Shrooms. It's bland, boring and laughable. The film was clearly written by someone who has no experience with magic mushrooms, only what they learned in school (I.e "drugs are bad m'kay, you'll lose your mind!"). I'm annoyed that I wasted two hours of my life watching this when I could have watched something much more entertaining, or better yet I could have gone shrooming!

Maybe I am too old but this was a movie that I don't think should have been made. Maybe someones love interest needed a show piece? First why the hell would you travel all the way to Ireland to trip on some mushrooms? There plenty available in the U.S. Tara takes what I guess would be called a death cap and survives. This gives her "the second sight" able to see some of the future. The only problem is everyone is still tripping on the shrooms. Since there are no black people in this movie the steroid using rage freak is the first to die. They start dieing off one by one. All this from a myth that is true. There seems to be four creatures involved. The only boy to survive the massacre in the boys school because he was with the guard dogs in the kennel (from the shot of his mouth when Holly dies, a cannibal), a sadistic pedophile "Brother" of the monastery that ran the school and two very inbred woods men(?). For some reason the police show up at the end and saves Tara. She is actually the killer of everyone. Possessed? Psycho from the shroom? I don't know but I will admit the ending was a little surprising to me.

Shrooms takes a potentially interesting premise and goes nowhere with it. It has a unique setting in Ireland, but turns into a standard American-style killer in the woods movie. It has hallucinogenic mushrooms but little trippy imagery, and it has an ending you'll see coming miles away. In short, it has nothing.American college students go off to the woods for a bit of psychedelic mushroom hunting. Things start to turn bad when one of the students takes a particularly toxic shroom. This does not bode well for them or the viewer.The film has a number of issues one could go after. The characters are just too dumb to live. First, they decide it's a great idea to go gallivanting around the woods even after they learn there are a pair of creepy inbred shepherds wandering around. Then, they don't leave the woods to seek medical attention after one of them ingests a lethal mushroom that the resident shroom expert knows causes psychotic reactions. The ending, in which the protagonist turns out to have killed her friends in a toadstool-induced delirium, is all too predictable.However, the main flaw is that the filmmakers don't take advantage of their concept. With the exception of one scene involving a talking cow, there is no real hallucinogenic imagery in the movie. Had the director had any sense, he would have turned the movie into an hour and a half of psychedelic thrills. Even if it wasn't scary, it would at least have been interesting.

With all the genuinely interesting ideas (and yes, talent) going on in this movie, it is a pity that the result is so fudged and directionless. Worse, there are the clichés which basically make up the screenplay. Roughly a third of 'Shrooms' is taken up by several repetitions of 'someone approaches something very, very slowly and then something jumps out at them.' Once or twice is fine, but more than that and the effect is to bore the viewer with a slowdown of narrative flow. Then there are the moments when a character just happens to stumble on the exact spot where a corpse/weapon/etcetera is hidden, which occurs far too often. There is a rather welcome twist ending which earns an extra point out of ten, but it is not enough to entice one to view this whole confusing and slightly tedious movie again.