[BLU-RAY REVIEW] SHROOMS

A horror movie set in the woods, with a group of teenagers menaced by something unseen, invariably will bring comparisons with The Blair Witch Project. So just how will Shrooms, an Irish made and set horror movie stand up to the comparison?

Plot

Shrooms tells the story of a group of American teenagers who travel to Ireland to meet up with a friend from college who has promised to take them on a weekends camping holiday in the woods to experience magic mushrooms (or shrooms as they’re more commonly known). During their harvesting of the shrooms Jake (played by Jack Huston), who is the one who invited the others to Ireland, discovers that some of the shrooms are actually the deathshead variety that, according to Celtic myth can gift the taker with prescient visions. Warning the others away from this variety it doesn’t take a genius to realise that one of the group will end up taking one and sure enough Tara, who is hoping to rekindle her relationship with Jake, ingests one of these super-powerful shrooms.

Soon enough she starts having visions about a horrible monk from the now closed children’s home stalking them through the woods and, even though they can’t be sure if what she is seeing is real or not, one by one the friends begin to die.

And that’s pretty much it! To be honest with you an awful lot of this movie is generic. As is typical with a horror movie involving teenagers you get the generic cast - the bitchy girls, the jock, the “Jay clone”, the cool guy and the pretty virgin and a lot of the plot feels reminiscent of movies like The Blair Witch Project and Cabin Fever but just to dismiss it as “yet another” teen clone horror is to do it a disservice.

The first thing that hits you is the way that it’s been filmed. I wouldn’t dream of accusing director Paddy Breathnach of ever taking shrooms himself but his depiction of their effects, for the most part, are incredibly good. And the prescient visions experienced by Tara, and the uncertainty as to what is actually responsible are handled very well and added to the disorientation due to the drugs leaves you as unsure as to what’s going on as the cast.

The cast, as a general rule, are ok even if their characters are pretty generic but the actress who plays Tara, Lindsey Haun, is superb and it’s her performance that really sells the movie. The rest of the cast are good but Lindsey is definitely the linch pin on which the movie is grounded and as such she does a brilliant job. Her performance, which is never over the top even when she is meant to be out of it on the shrooms, is totally believable. It is a shame though that the rest of the cast don’t ever really feel as developed as characters as she does.

The movie is fairly short at only 84 minutes but it doesn’t feel rushed in anyway. The pace of the movie is pretty much perfect as it has an initial slow build up introducing the characters before launching into the bloodletting but once it does start with the killings the pace doesn’t let up as the characters are pursued through the woods by whatever it is that is killing them.

There are a couple of red herrings peppered here and there between the killings but for the most part I think that any fan of the horror movie genre will guess the eventual outcome of the movie. This isn’t a bad thing, as it doesn’t really detract from the movie as a whole but it would have been nice to have been actually surprised by the ending rather than just feeling like “Oh, there we are then”. But maybe that’s more down to the amount of horror movies that I watch rather than any real failing of the movie itself!

As this is the Blu-Ray you would expect the movie to look great and I have to say that I wasn’t disappointed by the way it looked at all. The transfer was great and the visuals throughout were crystal sharp and clear. The only thing I was slightly disappointed by was the fact that there wasn’t any interactive content on the extras, but the movie itself really does look good on Blu-Ray.

Special Features

Director’s Commentary: This commentary track is a lot of fun as Paddy Breathnach is joined by writer Pearse Elliott and talks us through their experiences making the movie, which is pretty entertaining. Certainly worth a listen.
3 Deleted Scenes: The deleted scenes here wouldn’t have really added much to the overall story but they’re interesting to see.
3 Alternative Scenes: Alternative takes of a couple of scenes. To be honest with you the best versions had been used in the movie so these are interesting to see for a different look at the scenes but not much else.
2 Alternative Endings: These two alternative endings are really not that much different to the one used in the final take but you can see what they were thinking and to be honest one of them I actually prefer in a way!
2 Bloopers: Yep, two scenes with the cast screwing up! Nothing like a little gag reel!
Cast And Crew Interviews: Lots of interviews with the cast and crew - and I do mean a lot! But they’re pretty much your regular “Talking Heads” type thing with the cast and crew talking about their experiences and how great it was to work on the movie etc.
“Behind-The-Scenes” Featurette: This behind the scenes featurette is quite odd as, although it is footage from behind the scenes it’s almost like it’s camcorder footage as the sound quality while they’re filming scenes is crappy! Still, it’s an interesting glimpse into the filming of the movie, even if you don’t get much input from the cast and crew during it.

Overall this is an entertaining horror movie. We’re not in ground breaking territory here but the movie is enjoyable and the extras are decent enough. It’s a shame that the makers didn’t utilise the possibilities of the Blu-Ray format a little bit more but the movie looks and sounds great in hi-def.

If you’re a fan of horror movies like Cabin Fever then you will probably enjoy this entertaining, but not completely original, Irish horror movie, but it might possibly be a better rental to begin with than a definite purchase.

To enter a competition to possibly win a copy of Shrooms on Blu-Ray along with a Blu-Ray player (and to watch a trailer) click here.

Shrooms is released in the UK on the 5th of May 2008 on both DVD and Blu-Ray.

Posted on Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 11:33 am under DVD Reviews (R2) by Gareth.
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