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Six dopes go looking for magic mushrooms in the backwoods of Ireland. While tripping on the shrooms, they encounter someone determined to kill them off and must fight for survival.

Awful, awful film! It's a disjointed, achingly dull mess. It feels like there is nothing happening 90% of the time. Watch as the lead runs from a cloaked figure that's anything but scary, then repeat ad nauseum. The editing, intended to be trippy or not, is just pathetic. I hated the characters. They're bitchy and obnoxious to the extreme. Terrible dialogue too, a great example being when two of the girls talk to a third about what she sees in her boyfriend. There are attempts at humor, but they all fall flat. The kills, or lack thereof, are weak. With a film this poor in all other areas, good kills were it's only hope of being anything but a total waste. Alas, we don't get to see half of them, and the others are nothing to write home about. I can't forget the ending, which is just laughable. I haven't been this annoyed with a movie in quite some time.

While browsing the DVD section around the time this was released, I had the misfortune of deciding to grab it on an impulse buy. Bad move! I fought the urge to just throw it in the trash, but the urge eventually won out. This thing belongs in a landfill.

I am not surprised by the polarized opinions regarding this movie, although I do think there is a lot of overreaction.

Shrooms is simply a decent little movie that seems promising when you first begin to watch it, thanks in great part to solid direction tricks. However, eventually it fails to deliver because of a very, very weak story and a failed attempt at defying genres.

When you first start to watch, the movie grabs your attention with what seems like good characters and the remote set is also well showcased. You get some threads of character development and the story flows quickly to introduce the mood thanks to a character recounting a legend and one character consuming mushrooms.

Unfortunately, it's at this point that the movie starts going in all directions. Many reviewers seem offended that the movie didn't deliver a given experience which seems to be due to their expectations that this movie would follow a specific formula. Be it a "classic horror tale" or a slasher flick or gore movie. While movie fans would be wise not to make so many assumptions, one must admit there was a failure here by director Breathnach to develop a coherent mood and story.

For instance, the character development in this movie leads absolutely nowhere. In fact, many movies which do *not* rely on effective character development other than as a side-dish actually fare better than Shrooms. Yet we can't help but think it was sorely needed here. As well, the movie flirts between psychological horror, action horror and supernatural horror without ever hitting the marks. One can blend ANY genres if it is done effectively. But a mediocre story is much better off sticking to a proved formula.

One other fault of this movie is its derivative nature, borrowing tricks from a great many flicks such as Deliverance, Blair Witch and too many slasher flicks to name.

Finally, I have no idea if the director attempted a "plot twist" or not but I could see the plot twist almost as the seed was planted. I kept hoping there would be more to it, that it would be misdirection of some kind or that it would be made more explicit but no. The ending offers flashbacks explaining what happened, as if the audience wouldn't be aware of that! So what about the good? Well, the direction is really tight and some scenes, particularly early on, are effective at offering tensed moments. Lindsey Haun is also convincing as Tara. The rest of the cast is really forgettable. None of them are noticeably weak with the exception of Robert Hoffman, who really looked like he didn't belong.

I am left wondering if the editing is at fault here. Was a decision made to cut 30, 45 minutes of this movie that might have made it a great film? I certainly think this is possible. Almost none of the scenes felt boring. It just felt like an incomplete experience. Existential horror turned into classic slasher/survival movie midway into production.

Director Paddy Breathnach, who is more familiar with edgy comedies, is a welcome breath of fresh air compared to the very boring, repetitive directors who focus on the horror genre. But the screenplay by Pearse Elliott is at fault here.

Shrooms is one of those movies you should already know everything about before even watching it, just based on the premise. A group of friends experiencing mushrooms trips in the wilderness, turns into a deadly fiasco indistinguishable from reality. A standard run-of-the-mill campy horror flick, complete with a horror movie starter-set cast; the smart and relatable lead female character, the annoying idiot jock, the goofball stoner, the b*tch, the outcast female, and the handsome nice guy (who also is occasionally, like in this case, the foreigner).

The movie has good, maybe even great moments. I especially like the 2 "locals," their characters aren't new to this genre, but they're fun and quite creepy and add an interesting flare to the movie. Some of the effects are well done, and the story is entertaining enough to keep you interested, and the very end gives the movie a nice touch.

However, the movie is riddled with clichés, the predictable jumps scares, and the gore effects aren't as good as they could have been. There's a part towards the end of the movie where they had so many chances to make to good, but it turned out rather boring.

Everything else is pretty standard, nothing special or particularly bad about the acting, directing, or screenplay.

In short, it's an average run-of-the-mill horror flick. If you're looking for something amazing, this isn't it, but if you're bored or are just a horror fan looking to enlarge your viewing collection, it's definitely worth a watch.

My favorite scene: The scene in the home of the two locals, I love the dialogue between them, very unsettling.

I saw the advert for "shrooms" and instantly wanted to see it so i rented a copy. I think the real clincher that will get this film an audience is the fact that it brings the drug element into a horror. I was hoping for a very trippy film that was so messed up you don't know whether to scream or rewind and rethink.

Unfortunately "Shrooms" goes for the premonition approach. After taking a bad shroom, Tera the main girl starts "seeing things". I just thought from that point on i'd seen it all before. I was right. Most of this film is simply people walking around, looking for something with a scared look on their face. The whole back story seems to be a relatively regurgatated camp fire tale that is used in most films "a bad house, kids are abused, one messed up kid left"- come on this just isn't scary.

Admittedly the ending is clever, but again not the most original.

The potential this film had is wasted on what seems to be a boring storyline. Not much trippyness or edge of your seat tension, just another B-grade horror.

I cannot remember the last time a horror movie irritated me to this degree...SHROOMS is about a group of American friends (who actually don't appear to like each other much) who go to Ireland for vacation. They're obviously spoiled brats because the only thing on their mind when they're in freakin' IRELAND is getting their hands on some magic mushrooms ASAP. They meet up with some Irish friend (who is obviously British faking a bad Irish accent) that the lead girl (played by the creepy little girl from JC's VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED--the rest of her face has now caught up with her forehead, thank goodness) is creaming over. They immediately go camping in the woods and searching for shrooms. VotD girl gnaws on a mushroom that the Irish-but-British guy specifically said not to eat because it's poisonous. Soon she starts flipping out and having flash-forwards about her friends dying. It's up to her to save her friends from the ominous backwoodsmen, the creepy black-hooded ghost that pops up between people legs and/or above their heads, and the obvious overused plot twists in the script.

It seems like every line of dialogue spoken by the obnoxious 20-somethings in this movie features the word "shrooms." And you thought JUNOisms were annoying! If you took a sip of your Irish coffee every time someone in this movie said "shrooms," you'd be dead before the first jump scare.

The only good thing about SHROOMS is the movie poster, which features a skull shaped out of SHROOMS in the moonlight. Cool!