Shrooms

R4 DVD & Blu Ray

Icon Entertainment

Hallucinogenic mushrooms have always been of interest to those seeking a “psychedelic” experience. They have been used by a diverse range of indigenous peoples in an attempt to experience something beyond the physical from India to Russia and Mexico. R. Gordon Wasson, a well respected Ethnomycologist, believed that the legendary Soma – the elixir of the Gods from the Vedas of India was based on the Fly Agaric Mushroom and that the Eleusinian mysteries of Greece were similarly based. Others have gone much further arguing for a enthenogenic basis for religious experience. Professor John Allegro in his controversial book “The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross” even argued that Christianity began as a mushroom cult !

Shrooms uses the consumption of Hallucinogenic mushrooms to spin a fascinating tale. A group of friend travel to the back lands of Ireland to spent time together and get wasted. As they enter the park, they hit a deer and need to put it down as it clearly cannot be saved. They also meet some of the locals who it seems live off any roadkill they can find, they are not an appealing sight.

Throughout these first scenes is a real sense of the dichotomy between beauty and violence. There is the lush countryside and the open wounds left on the landscape by logging as well as the image of the freedom of nature juxtaposed with the deer killed and then dragged off to be eaten.

The team set up their tents, lock away their mobile phones and settle down to some interpersonal clashes. Jack explains some basic mushroom lore and they carefully look for “safe” mushrooms to consume. For some reason Tara takes a death’s head mushroom, which unbeknown to her, Jack has explained to the others opens the door to the dead and was used in celebratory rites by the Irish Druids.

Tara’s begins to have visions of the future and they are not very nice, she sees the monk stalking them and becomes hysterical and incoherent. The question is what is real and what is just a hallucination. She retired to bed as the rest of them talk around the fire.

As they are relaxing preparing for the next day’s inner exploration, Jack spins a ghost tale about a derelict building a short walk away. It seems the building was once a boy’s home headed by an order of black cowled monks. They have spent their missionary lives in Africa and returned scarred and disturbed. They treated the boys badly including abuse, torture and even murder. The senior monk carried a cane with a knife imbedded in it and would regularly hang the worst offenders in the storeroom claiming they committed suicide.

On one day, the head monk decides to punish two misbehaving twins for throwing rocks at the chapel. He burnt one of the boys face beyond recognition and makes him permanently wear a sack over his head. The other brother he hangs in front of his mutilated twin. As revenge, the young man laced the monk’s soup with death’s head mushrooms. He never considers the results, the monks sexual and violent fantasies go out of control and they rape, torture and kill all except a few boys who escape. It is rumoured that the monk and the sack boy still haunt the forest during mushroom season.

The next day as they consume the mushrooms things begin to get out of control. One of them is missing and Tara’s visions become increasingly violent. As the body count increases, one is left wondering who is stalking them.

Shrooms plays over various storylines throughout the film. It is possible that ghosts are really haunting the forest and stalking them, but it is equally likely that the locals could be the source of the trouble. On the other hand, their problems could simply be too many mushrooms.

I like the way these various realities are melded together. We have superb visions of the monk and child, for example, but are they truly ghosts or simply the product of drugged over active imaginations? The locals look dangerous and their description of their sex lives is certainly perverse but are they actually stalking the team or trying to protect them. When we realize the locals are actually the boys who escaped the home, it seems they are just as scared of the ghostly monk.

The “ghosts” are superbly portrayed and seem to be a mixture of western and Asian cinematic traditions. The monk looks like an Irish cowled monk dressed in black, but moves, crawls and acts like the ghosts from an Asian film, it is a very eerie combination and quite effective.

The mushroom background to the story is creative, it is very different from run of the mill ghost films and allows the filmmaker to play with our experience of reality and leave us guessing right to the very end. At that is my concern, the ending.

When you think the various threads of the plot are about to be brought together in a supernatural tale centred on the old boys home, the film continues and offers a far more mundane climax. The ending is unexpected but I am in two minds about it, yes it “resolves” the various storylines of the film but I also through it took away from the more intriguing facets of the tale.

Regardless of how you view the ending of the film, the movie itself is innovative and inventive; it has a very different approach to horror mixing together hallucinations, visions, a serial killer on the loose, interpersonal clashes and ghosts to create a truly nail biting experience. It is filled with superb cinematography, weird characters and ultimately proves a very successful work of “new horror” which works to redefine what a slasher/ghost film really is.

This review will appear in Volume 2 No.2 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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