Shrooms (film)
Shrooms is a 2007 horror film directed by Paddy Breathnach, and stars Lindsey Haun, Jack Huston, and Max Kasch.
American student Tara and her college friends (Bluto, Lisa, Holly and Troy) travel to Ireland to meet with local resident and friend Jake (and Tara's love interest), and go camping in woodlands surrounding a long-disused children's home. Whilst collecting psilocybin mushrooms for later consumption, Tara ingests a deathcap mushroom and suffers a seizure after which she experiences dream-like trances in which she begins having premonitions of future events.
When night falls, the group gathers around the camp fire, with a still-weak Tara resting in her tent. Jake tells a Ghost Story of the empty children's home nearby, and of a violent, sadistic monk who survived an assault by one of his charges, as revenge for killing his twin brother.
That night, things start to go wrong. Horribly wrong.
Tropes used in Shrooms (film) include:
- All Love Is Unrequited: Tara towards Jake. It's implied (and mentioned in the Director's Commentary) that this, combined with the deathcap-induced craziness, unleashes Tara's repressed rage and causes her to kill everyone.
- Alpha Bitch: Lisa, to a certain extent.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: "I love you, Tara." Subverted, as it later turns out that it didn't actually happen.
- Ax Crazy: Tara.
- Black Eyes of Evil: Tara has them in some of the flashbacks during the ending.
- Break the Cutie: Holly. Possibly Tara.
- But You Screw One Goat!: Ernie and Bernie are heavily implied to be into doing... unsavoury things with livestock.
- Creepy Child: The Lonely Twin.
- Creepy Monotone: (Axe to the head) "I love you, Jake".
- Deadpan Snarker: The cow.
- Developing Doomed Characters
- Do-It-Yourself Theme Tune: The song "Curveball", featured in the ending credits, was performed by the Rig Brothers, but features vocals by Lindsey Haun (Tara). Additionally, she also co-wrote the song.
- Don't Go in The Woods
- Downer Ending
- Everything's Better with Cows
- The Faceless: The Lonely Twin, who wears a sack over his head.
- Fan Disservice: The "dogging" scene.
- Final Girl: Played straight, yet twisted on its head - Tara is not only the final girl, but also the killer.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Most of the deaths.
- Groin Attack: Happens to Bluto.
- Haunted House: At least, that's what the characters (and the audience) are lead to believe the children's home is at first... However, Word of God says that the issue of the story of the home being real or not was intended to be vague - hence the brief shots of it at the beginning of the film.
- Hilarious Outtakes: Present as a DVD extra. Oddly, they're interspliced between deleted scenes.
- How We Got Here: The first few shots of the film show an unidentified woman running through the woods, clearly panicked. At the end of the film, Tara runs into the woods after escaping from the ambulance.
- Implacable Man: The Black Brother.
- Jerk Jock: Bluto.
- Jump Scare: The goat.
- Kill'Em All: Tara is the only main character to survive. Ernie also survives, but, unfortunately for him, he is falsely arrested for the murders.
- The Killer in Me
- Mind Screw: Regarding Tara's apparent visions of the future, and it is also left unclear as to whether the story of the children's home is real or not. It is also left open to interpretation just how aware Tara is of the murders she commits.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: While Jake's reasons for confiscating the group's mobile phones is understandable given the nature of the trips they could have after ingesting the mushrooms, it still isn't exactly a wise idea (arguably). To be fair to him, though, he wasn't to know that the phones would get stolen...
- Nothing Is Scarier: The segment of the film that takes place in the children's home.
- Obviously Evil: Completely averted with Ernie and Bernie. They are extremely odd and come across as more than a little creepy (and are, as mentioned in the Director's Commentary, intended to be the Irish version of backwoods hillbillies), but seem to be fairly nice people (if rather disturbed).
- Paedophile Monk: The Black Brother is heavily implied to be this.
- Psychic Powers: After eating the deathcap, Tara seems to have gained powers of precognition. It's left deliberately vague as to whether this is the case or not.
- Red Herring: Ernie and Bernie.
- Scenery Porn: The woods are gorgeous.
- Shout-Out: Tara's first fit after ingesting the deathcap is a direct Shout-Out to a visually similar scene from A Tale of Two Sisters.
- Later, when Tara in the children's home, she nervously opens a door into... an empty room (save for a lone, tiny chair). She leaves, only for the Black Brother to emerge from the very same room and silently follow her. This is a reference to a similar scene from The Exorcist III.
- Slasher Movie: Partly.
- Surreal Horror
- Those Two Guys: Bernie and Ernie.
- Through the Eyes of Madness
- Tomato Surprise: Tara turns out to have been the killer all along, having been driven crazy from ingesting the deathcap.
- Too Dumb to Live: Lisa really should have known better than to wade through the lake to escape.
- Twist Ending
- Unreliable Narrator
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: When Tara has her first fit, a small trickle of vomit can be seen on her chin. Later, when Bluto is tripping out, he vomits all over his chin and down his front.
- Wild Child: The feral boy known as "The Dog".
- Woman Scorned: Possibly Tara.
- You Didn't Ask: When Holly attempts to use Bernie and Ernie's phone and finds that it doesn't work:
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Holly: You said you had a phone. |
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