Deja Drugs

I just rented the Irish horror film “Shrooms” (2007), which succeeded in being quite scary, despite the fact that I figured out its “secret” about a third of the way into the movie (it reminded me of the French horror film “High Tension,” although I couldn’t put my finger on why I made the connection between the two).

The film’s about five American friends who join their Irish friend (who is actually English, another thing I figured out) to do magic mushrooms in rural Ireland near a closed institution that used to house a bunch of sadistic, homicidal brothers and a weird twin with a bag over his head (that reminded me of “Baghead,” which I’d just seen).  One girl, Tara, eats what she doesn’t know is a “death’s head mushroom” (that reminded me of “Silence of the Lambs”), which is potentially lethal, and has the ability to take the consumer into another dimension.  She goes into that other dimension resulting in bloodshed and horror, yada yada yada, one survivor, blah blah blah.

For me the movie kinda fell apart after the secret was revealed; some scenes that were deleted may have explained it a bit, but it was still a little floppy in the area of believability, in my book.  But, overall it creeped me out, so I cut it some slack.  I think the reason the movie’s frightening is because anything could happen, and you don’t know what’s really happening and what isn’t (unless you figure it out), and it’s full of spooky visuals, creepy folklore, and crazy country mofos.  At any moment, something could grab, stab or chop up these poor tripping kids, and they never see it coming, even when they know it is.

I suppose it was inevitable, but “Shrooms” was so much like an anti-drug film, I had to wonder if that was the intention.  I kinda doubt it, but I don’t know Paddy Breathnach, the director, and he could very well be trying to send a message to today’s carefree youths.  Or, you know, adults who haven’t yet experimented but just may decide to do so any second.  The film pretty much says, “If you take magic mushrooms, you could have a very, very bad trip and possibly get mutilated or murdered in some horrible fashion.”  I couldn’t help remembering the antidrug film I saw when I was a tweenie that kept me from being interested in drugs.

I was in the eighth grade when we were called into the gymnasium, where the principal had set up a large movie screen, and proceeded to “scare us straight” with a movie called “Cold Turkey,” which was probably about twenty minutes long but seemed to go on for an hour.  ”Cold Turkey” was comprised of a series of vignettes in which real-life junkies were attempting to get off heroin.  The way I remember it, these scenes unfolded to some heavy psychedelic music, and it was grainy, raw, and riveting.  Two junkies stood out for me:  one sat on a toilet, sweating, in total agony as he tried to shit his guts out, and the other was a woman on a staircase who projectile vomited - I swear - ten feet, in a curving fountain of yellow bile. Grossed out yet?  I was.  And terrified.  I have no idea what the kids around me were thinking or how they looked, but I’m quite sure my mouth hung open through the whole sordid freakshow.