Shrooms

Every element of Paddy Breathnach’s Irish slasher movie is so familiar that it feels like a dog-eared horror anthology found down the back of the sofa. Lured to rural Ireland by their college pal, Jake’s promise of the ultimate ‘magic mushroom’ trip, five American students (nice girl, jock, babe, geek, quirky hippy) are fed mind-altering fungi and spooky campfire stories about the sadistic Black Brother, whose ghost roams the woods. This is after they’ve run down a goat and met a pair of inbred, indigenous pig-fuckers called Ernie and Ernie. The kids are soon off their faces and up to their necks in gore. Reality is bent of shape, sanity slips away, and friendship is tested – with flashes here and there of ‘Ringu’, ‘Cabin Fever’ and ‘Severance’. ‘I’ve overdosed on the heroin of mushrooms,’ whines the annoying Tara, ‘and I don’t know what’s real and what’s not.’ Director Paddy Breathnach and scriptwriter Pearse Elliott think this is ‘Blair Witch’ on hallucinogens. It ain’t. They also think we’ll be so bowled over by the signposted ‘sucker punch’ ending. We weren’t.