(18) 84min

Paddy I Went Down Breathnach’s ‘kids in the woods’ horror movie digs the rich genre furrow that runs from Evil Dead through Blair Witch Project to Wrong Turn. But here’s the twist – everyone’s off their faces, tripping on magic mushrooms.

A bunch of cleancut, good looking American teens – an unlikely band of psilocybin pioneers – have come to Eire to take ‘shrooms’. They all seem to hate each other but are happy to travel halfway round the world to drop powerful hallucinogens together. But there’s a local legend about murderous monks and slaughtered young offenders. Then – surprise, surprise! – the members of the group appear to be attacked by ghostly monks and deformed killer kids.

With a mainly American cast and some random inbred yokels providing the only local colour, Breathnach’s film never takes advantage of its Irish setting. There’s not even any decent gore as the deaths are largely told through drugged up flashbacks or mushie-induced premonitions, obscured by screen effects and foggy lighting. If you’ve watched any horror films in your life the final twist will have been screaming out at you from the very first death. Lazy and unoriginal.

General release from Fri 23 Nov.