FrightFest review – The Weed Eaters
A scrappy, hand-to-mouth New Zealand horror comedy, evidently cobbled together by communal effort – the principle cast all have story credits – and directed with a light hand on the reins by Callum Devlin. The high concept is a strain of marijuana which has the side effect of making human flesh delicious.
After a 1982 prologue demonstrating that this weed makes for a bad evening, we pick up over the sweltering antipodean New Year celebration with teacher Brian (Finnius Teppett) bringing his relatively recent girlfriend Jules (Alice May Connolly) to the sticks with his longtime stoner pals Campbell (Samuel Austin) and Charlie (Annabel Kean). They hang a glitterball and lights up in a (barely) converted sheep-shed and chance across a jar of the dangerous pot while borrowing a ladder from farmer Neil (Paul Kean). A mishap with a crossbow spills brains on crackers and the quartet tuck in with various levels of enthusiasm. The other side effect of the weed is paranoia, or maybe a shared compulsion to eat someone and regrets about this the next day naturally lead to schisms withing the gang – but the second half of the film has the group turn against each other, but in humorously half-hearted fashion which still doesn’t inhibit the body count.
I guess a lot of the kiwi pot humour is local-specific, but there’s a kind of moony charm about the dripfeed of wry remarks between atrocities. It’s not especially outrageous in the splat department. All four leads are funny in different ways, but Connolly gets the most good material as the token reluctant cannibal – especially when she snarls ‘nahh’ (almost a catch-phrase) or is overdosed on the weed by the others to keep her in the circle of guilt and becomes almost fiendish.
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