KMC Forums - Shrooms

Horror movies in the woods are a dime a dozen, so when a new one comes out usually its more of the same. The movie Shrooms is a prime example of a horror film in the woods that uses many elements of similar films, but also does enough to stand out on it's own. Despite giving us settings and a storyline that seems all too familiar, Shrooms does a good job in adding it's own original characters as well as interesting storyline. It combines a good use of drug related hallucinations and flashes combined with real events that helps keep you wonder whats real and what inst. It might not be the best backwoods slasher, but it does enough to provide some entertainment and a few cheap scares.

Shrooms opens up with five friends taking a trip from America to Ireland to relax and try hallucinogenic mushrooms. One girl, Tara, is going because this guy Jake that she has been seeing lives in Ireland and she gets to meet up with him. Jake picks them up at the airport and tells them they are heading to the woods to find the best shrooms they can. While traveling into the woods the group hits a goat and kills it, only to see a group of crazy wood dwellers who want the carcass for their dinner. Before they get in their car and continue on, Jake says they are called the indigenous people.
Once they arrive at their spot in the woods, Jake tells everyone to leave all their cell phones behind in the van so when they are tripping on shrooms they wont accidentally call the cops or an ambulance or other unnecessary calls. On their first mushroom hunt, three of them stumble across the dreaded Deathshead Fungi that Jake explains are so powerful that it kills most people by causing their heart, lungs and kidneys to explode. Legend has it, if you survive eating it the mushroom gives you the power to communicate with the dead, shapeshift, and have the gift of premonition. The ancient Irish druids believe it is a like a portal to another dimension.

Before Jake can find the others and warn them about these shrooms, Tara finds and accidentally eats one. She goes into seizures and stops breathing, only to be resuscitated by Jake. When she regains consciousness, Tara says she knew he was going to save her as she saw it in her head. She soon begins to have visions and see and hear things no one else can see.

With their first day of Mushroom hunting complete, they set up camp and make a fire. Jake tells a story about The Black Knights who had a house in those woods. Terrible things go went on in the house. Legend has it one of the Black Knights known as the Black Brother beat kids in the house with a spike weapon. There is a story of The Lonely Twin, a boy who was disfigured by the evil brother and forced to watch his twin brother be hung. The lonely brother went on a rampage but his body and the body of the evil Black Brother were never found. It is said they both still roam the woods and kill people with a metal spike to the face.

That same night everyone has a bit of a fight before bed. Everyone eventually goes to sleep but Tara has a vision her one friend Bluto goes into the woods and gets viciously killed. She wakes up to see he is missing, but finds him wandering in the woods. She brings him back to camp before before something back happens to him. However, the next morning Bluto is missing again and when they all go to phone help they find that Ludo went back to the car and stole all the cellphones. The guys and girls split up, and the girls end up finding Ludo's body slashed and buried in the woods. With Bluto already dead and Tara seeing visions of her friend�s deaths by a black clad killer, it is quite obvious there is something more dangerous in the woods than just a bad shroom trip.