There are bad horror movies, and then there are Shrooms—a film so aggressively idiotic it feels less like a psychological horror flick and more like a dare someone lost in a pub. Director Paddy Breathnach must have looked at Ireland’s haunting, misty forests and thought: “You know what would really bring this landscape to life? A bunch of American exchange students on magic mushrooms, getting murdered by a discount Scooby-Doo villain in a monk costume.”
If The Blair Witch Project had been remade by people who thought subtlety was a brand of breakfast cereal, you’d get this. And unlike a real mushroom trip, which might deliver moments of insight or at least funny giggles, this cinematic shrooming session just makes you want to throw up and swear never to touch fungi again.
The Setup: Americans Abroad, Doing What Americans Do Best
Our central heroine, Tara (Lindsey Haun), arrives in Ireland with a gaggle of college stereotypes masquerading as friends:
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Bluto (yes, really), the aggressive jock who acts like every frat party rolled into one sweaty meathead.
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Troy, the token sensitive guy who looks like he got lost on his way to a CW teen drama audition.
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Lisa and Holly, the bickering girlfriends whose only function is to shriek, argue, and be available for gruesome death.
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Jake, their English guide who provides local lore and is contractually obligated to tell a spooky campfire story.
Together, they head out into the woods to find psilocybin mushrooms, because nothing says vacation abroad like taking questionable drugs in a damp forest next to an abandoned orphanage haunted by a homicidal monk. Honestly, I’ve heard of cultural immersion, but this is ridiculous.
The Hallucination Problem (AKA, the Plot)
Naturally, Tara eats the wrong mushroom. Not the fun kind. Not the giggly “let’s stare at the clouds until we think they’re cows” kind. No, she eats a death bell mushroom. Because of course she does. This isn’t foreshadowing—it’s just the director waving a giant neon sign that says: “Don’t worry, this will be our lazy plot twist later.”
Tara immediately starts having seizures, hallucinations, and premonitions of her friends dying. You’d think the group would stop, I don’t know, eating mushrooms after this happens, but no. They brew mushroom tea and pass it around like they’re at some kind of woodland Starbucks. Spoiler: this is why natural selection exists.
The Villain: Discount Monk With a Hoodie
Jake’s campfire story tells of a sadistic monk from a nearby children’s home who survived being attacked by his victims and now haunts the woods. This is supposed to be creepy folklore, but it feels like a cut scene from Goosebumps.
Soon, Tara’s visions start coming true—friends wandering into the forest, seeing strange figures, and then dying violently. But because the characters are all higher than Snoop Dogg’s electric bill, the film blurs the line between hallucination and reality. Is it the monk? Is it Tara? Is it the mushrooms? Spoiler again: it’s Tara, because the monk subplot is just a narrative breadcrumb trail that leads nowhere. Imagine The Sixth Sense if the twist was “Bruce Willis was actually just drunk in the corner all along.”
The Murders: Not Even Fun in a Slasher Sense
Horror deaths are supposed to be either shocking or creatively entertaining. In Shrooms, they’re just sad, mostly because you don’t care about the characters enough to cheer for their survival or their demise.
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Bluto dies first, presumably because his name alone sealed his fate. His hallucinogenic trip climaxes with him being murdered, which was the best service the film did for the audience.
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Lisa and Holly wander into the woods bickering like they’re auditioning for Real Housewives of Dublin before being dispatched.
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Troy dies in the asylum, fulfilling his destiny as background noise.
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Jake breaks his leg, limps around, and is killed anyway, which feels less like horror and more like karma for dragging Americans into this mess.
The real scare is how boring it all is. If you’ve seen one “teens wander off and die in the woods” movie, you’ve seen them all—and those movies at least had the decency to be fun trash.
The Big Twist (Because Of Course There’s a Twist)
After Tara survives as the final girl, the movie pulls its grand revelation: Tara killed everyone. Not the monk. Not the ghosts. Not even the mushrooms. Tara, in her trippy haze, went full Psycho with a side of vegan hallucinogenics.
This might have worked if the film hadn’t already drowned us in hallucinatory nonsense for 90 minutes. Instead of “Wow, what a shocking twist,” it plays as, “Oh, thank God, finally an ending.” By the time she kills a paramedic and flees into the woods, the audience isn’t gasping—they’re already reaching for the eject button.
The Cinematography: Mushrooms and Mud
The film tries so hard to be artsy and trippy that it forgets to be watchable. Endless shaky-cam, weird filters, and “is it real or is it a hallucination?” sequences litter the movie like discarded glow sticks at a rave. It’s less a narrative and more a feature-length screensaver for stoners.
The Irish countryside looks beautiful, but the film somehow manages to make it feel bland and claustrophobic. Honestly, it takes real talent to make Ireland look boring, but Shrooms succeeds.
The Moral of the Story
So what’s the takeaway? Don’t do drugs in the woods? Don’t trust monks? Don’t go to Ireland with people named Bluto? Probably all of the above.
But mostly: don’t watch Shrooms. Because the real horror isn’t the deaths, the ghosts, or the monk—it’s enduring 90 minutes of pseudo-psychological horror nonsense that thinks it’s being clever when it’s just being loud.
Why It Fails
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The Characters Are Disposable: You couldn’t tell half of them apart even if you were sober.
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The Villain Is Nonsense: A murderous monk subplot that collapses like a wet tent.
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The Twist Is Predictable: When your main character eats the mushroom of death in the first 15 minutes, the twist writes itself.
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The Atmosphere Is Wasted: Ireland’s forests deserved better than to be the backdrop for what amounts to Scooby-Doo on Acid.
Final Thoughts
Shrooms is what happens when a film tries to combine folk horror, slasher tropes, and a drug-trip aesthetic into one messy stew—and then drops the pot in the mud. It’s not scary, it’s not smart, and it’s not even entertaining in a “so-bad-it’s-good” way. It’s just dull, like watching someone else’s bad trip without the fun of actually taking mushrooms yourself.
The only true hallucination here is the belief that this movie deserved distribution.
Final Rating: 🍄💀 (2 out of 10 bad trips)
One point for the dog named “The Dog.” One point for Ireland’s scenery. Everything else? Straight into the compost heap with the poisonous mushrooms.
