Film Analysis - 'Shrooms'

‘Shrooms’ – Film Analysis

‘Shrooms’ (2007), written by Pearse Elliott, directed by Paddy Breathnach and produced by Paddy McDonald and Robert Walpole, is an Irish and Danish co-production that was shot over a period of seven weeks – largely in Rossmore Park in Monaghan, Ireland. In this film we follow an American student Tara and her group of friends as they visit Ireland to meet with local resident and friend, Jake.  We follow them as they go to Ireland woods to collect magic mushrooms and trip out. On their way they meet some strange inhabitants of the woods and it doesn't take long until a creepy story is being told at the campfire which might be more than just a story. From this point onwards things start to spiral out of control as people start to disappear, mysterious figures are seen lingering in the woods and the creepy story begins to melt into reality. The horror kicks in along with the effect of the mushrooms.

Loaded – “It’s one hell of a trip”

Zoo – “Blair Witch on acid”
 

          In terms of following the narrative structure, I would say that Tzvetan Todorov’s theory goes well with this film. He suggests that all stories start with a status quo in which everything is normal and some event or enigma disrupts the normality, setting in chain a series of events. While the characters are out picking magic mushrooms, we follow the local Irish resident Jake as he informs some of the other characters of a certain kind of mushroom that can be identified with a black spot on the top which are not to be eaten as they can cause death or near death experiences. Shortly after this we follow Tara, the film’s protagonist, as she finds one of these mushrooms with a black spot and as she was not there when Jake informed the others, she goes ahead and eats it. This is the moment in the film that kicks it all off and could be seen as the enigma that disrupts the normality and leads to further strange events.
 

          In a lot of horror movies, especially in movies like ‘Shrooms’, the audience expects either a killer or a monster or some sort of supernatural ghost to be let loose against a group of stupid, immoral teenagers who are very familiar with sex on the exception of one virginal, slightly masculine female character who survives to be the ‘final girl’.  This expectation is filled throughout the whole film. The fact that the group of teenagers are going to the woods to do magic mushrooms in the first place, automatically shows the audience that the group of teenagers are stupid and immoral. They prove to be very familiar with sex with phrases such as, ‘Hey, us girls need to get laid too’. This is on the exception of Tara, the films protagonist. When references to sex are brought up she describes it to be ‘vile’ and rolls her eyes. When the film starts turning into a horror, Tara is the character that leads the others and starts to show her more masculine and monstrous side as she becomes more determined to survive from the monster. As, one by one, the other immoral teenagers die; Tara does in fact become the final girl although there is a twist to this narrative structure at the end as the audience finds out that Tara is the one who has been killing the others while tripping on mushrooms.

          Throughout this film, there are plenty of the common conventions of horror. Horror movies often chose the setting of an isolated place as this offers more opportunities for a sense of isolation or for a whole community to harbour a secret. ‘The woods’ are a very good setting for this, like they use this setting in ‘Shrooms’ as it offers less help for the victims and denies the characters any safety or relief from other people that they could turn to like they would if they were in a busy place such as the inner city. The character Jake even states ‘We’ll have the whole place to ourselves’ which already beings the feeling of isolation to the film. POV shots are used a lot throughout the film putting the audience in the eyes of the monster and then towards the end into the eyes of Tara, the victim which as Carol Clover would argue raises issues about audience identification. This is also very common in horror movies as it confuses the audiences as they are not sure if they want the victim to get away while seeing their POV or if they want the monster to catch the victim while seeing their POV. 

          A lot of the camerawork is expressive rather than naturalistic especially when the monster is about to appear. Also, the character Tara has a lot of visions and these are very expressive. Weird high and low angles are used which are very common in horror as it gives the film a very disorienting feeling which makes it all the more scary for the audience. For example, there is one scene where Tara is hiding from the monster behind a tree when she hears something coming from on top of her and the camera is pointed upwards as we see the monster climbing down, head first towards the camera. Personally, I found this effect to be very scary.

           Overall, I think that ‘Shrooms’ is a good representation of a horror film and shows a good variety of the common conventions for the horror genre. For me at least and I presume a lot of others, it has the ability to scare the audience which is the main expression horror movies try to get from the audience. It has a good storyline which represents one of the common narrative structures of horror although this film challenges the expected ending of ‘the final girl facing the monster’ which she does, only to find that her herself is really the monster. I think this was a good twist to the film and gives an unexpected ending to the audience. There are a lot of conventions in this film that I would like to use in my own horror trailer. I think having the setting in the woods is a good idea even though it isn’t very original but I am still undecided on where to shoot my horror trailer. I will definitely include some expressive camerawork in my trailer as I believe this makes the movie more ‘spooky’ and helps show that the movie is part of the horror genre. Canted, high and low angles also help to do this. To conclude, I think that this film is a very good horror movie although the storyline and characters are very predictable and common and I would like to make my horror movie trailer more original and different to what the audience usually expects.