Confession: I've never done mushrooms. If I ever do (even though at age 35 my "trying new substances" days are almost over), I hope there isn't some ghost/beast thing running around trying to kill me after I take them. That would suck. And I guess that's pretty much the story of Shrooms.
It's worth noting that Shrooms is NOT a comedy. I expected it to be an Evil Bong-ish silly drug misadventure (the likes of which are generally painfully unfunny), but Shrooms is far from it. It plays more like a grim n' gritty slasher than anything. Not a particularly good one, mind you, but still a step up from your average drug comedy.
A group of college-aged students from England (I think) are heading out to the Irish countryside (I think) to enjoy a nice little trip (hehe). There, they meet up with Jake, a seasoned shroomer, and head out to the woods for a weekend of drug-induced fun. Final Girl Tara has a big time crush on Jake, and hopes that the weekend will bring them closer together. Unfortunately, while they are out foraging (hallucinogenic mushrooms just grow in the wild, where ever they are), Tara eats a death's head shroom. Which, at best, gets you violently ill and gives you nightmarish visions and - supposedly - psychic premonitions. At worst, it kills you. Tara doesn't die, but she has visions of the campfire legend/slasher Jake told the group about earlier. The friends start to get violently picked off one by one. Will any of our shroomin' friends get out of the woods alive? Tune in to find out!
So, Shrooms... our group here is in the standard slasher vein of "friends who don't actually seem to like each other," and as characters they run the gamut from okay to extremely unlikable. Tara probably fares the best, but she spends much of the film in a stupor. Plus, the scenes where she's having visions get old really fast. They are of the heavily stylized/music-videoy/quick cuts and jumpy editing type, and after awhile you just kind of say "enough already... we get it." I'd say about half of the of the group falls into the "hurry up and die" category, and the rest you are sort of ambivalent about. You occasionally run into the head-scratchingly dumb decision (why avoid stairs to jump out of a second story window? People on shrooms don't think they can fly, right?) - it's all pretty standard aggravating horror movie stuff... but it's still aggravating.
Horror-wise? I guess the best parts of the film are the atmosphere you get from the woodsy/marshy setting. Like I said, Shrooms is going for a grim n' gritty thing, and the grey skies and bogginess sell that vibe well. What you can see of the gore/kills is okay. Lots of it is kind of obscured (for story purposes I guess), and even though there are a couple of sloppily bloody scenes it isn't the kind of film that really revels in the carnage.
So while it's kind of an anti-drug tale, the morel of the story (ha!) seems to be that you shouldn't take *bad* drugs. Which is a good lesson to learn, I guess. All of the kids that took the cool shrooms seem to be having a gay old time until the mean old killer shows up - it's never really the drug's fault.
I guess Shrooms peaks at just okay. It's serviceable as a modern slasher thing, but it's never really fun in any way. On the contrary, there is a kind of interesting, dark vibe throughout the film, but it never really commits to being truly nihilistic or disturbing. It's just sort of there and doesn't really justify its existence. I guess the reveal is kind of disappointing too - although I didn't guess at it. But I'm pretty stupid, so whatever. You could do worse, but you could also do a lot better.
I would not really care if you watched this film.
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