MOVIES: Terror tale is one bad trip; SHROOMS Cert 18, 84mins **.

Byline: DAVID EDWARDS

A group of thrill-seeking American tourists go into the woods of Ireland to take magic mushrooms in a pitiful horror ripped straight from the pages of The Blair Witch Project and Switchblade Romance.

Not just unoriginal, dull and as scary as the adventures of Noddy, Shrooms makes you want to plant a tombstone in the earth and mourn the death of horror. In fact, in the last three years, I can think of perhaps only three shockers I'd watch again, with every other so-called chiller either lame, unscary or simply derivative.

Shot for pennies, we encounter five students who've flown from the States in the hope of having an amazing trip on the local forest-grown hallucinogens. But before they trip out, one of them swallows a poisonous cap that gives her the ability to see into the future.

You don't need the same to work out where this is going, thanks to a plot that begs, steals and borrows from at least a handful of horrors that have gone before, with the result being worse than all of them.

THE REEL LOWDOWN 

IF YOU LIKED... brain cancer, pancreatic flu...

YOU'LL LIKE THIS.

STAR RATINGS: ***** Must see at all cost **** A+ entertainment *** Average ** Poor * Save your money

CAPTION(S):

FOREST FRIGHT: Shrooms rips off Blair Witch