★ 3 / 10
_This movie was screened at Panic Fest._ The
Louisa Moore - Screen Zealots
_This movie was screened at Panic Fest._ The gruesome shocker of an opening scene is almost all that director Ariel Vida‘s “Trim Season” has going for it, and…
_This movie was screened at Panic Fest._
The gruesome shocker of an opening scene is almost all that director Ariel Vida‘s “Trim Season” has going for it, and it’s all downhill from there. With a kickoff like that, it makes the rest of the sluggish film seem even slower than it actually is. I don’t want to hear any of that “but it’s a slow burn!” talk: if a movie is unhurried to the point it’s no longer entertaining, then it’s not a success. Horror fans are going to be disappointed with just about everything up until the bloodbath of a finale, which is teeming with plenty of gore, carnage, and supernatural violence.
In this stoner folk horror story, recently unemployed Emma (Bethlehem Million) is in desperate need of rent money. When she and her best friend Julia (Alex Essoe) learn about a lucrative temporary job working on a marijuana farm, they see it as a chance to make some quick cash. The women sign up to become plant trimmers, but when they learn that the remote location of the fields and their new workplace is a creepy cabin in the woods, concerns begin to grow. After meeting their new coworkers and the big boss Mona (Jane Badler), it’s clear something isn’t right. Julia and Emma uncover the location’s dark secrets and must find a way to escape the mountain and its deadly history before it consumes them all.
The film is wide open to interpretation, which feels passive and lazy. There’s a ton of obnoxiously glaring symbolism too, which comes across like a film school project gone wrong. I suppose some of the ideas raised about female empowerment and gender assumptions are at least thoughtful (one of the actors, Bex Taylor-Klaus, and their character is nonbinary, and representation in films is commendable), but the more intriguing concepts are lost.
There are some haunting visuals that are striking, but the atmospheric lighting and overall mood just isn’t enough to salvage the film. The story is sparse and the performances are stiff. The supernatural mystery elements work decently with the horror-minded narrative, but the ending somehow manages to be both frustrating and polarizing, which is far from a magic combination.
The film’s bookends will appease horror fans, and there’s a lot of bloody gore (especially at the end). The problem is that the plot is too long and drawn out, the pacing is sluggish, the dialogue is boring, and the character development is stagnant. The majority of “Trim Season” is insufferable.
**
By: Louisa Moore / SCREEN ZEALOTS / WWW.SCREENZEALOTS.COM**
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★ 3 / 10
Not for the non-smoker
mistela67
Trim Season is for people who enjoy marijuana. I'm not one of those types. I don't even like smoking cigarettes, and this movie has almost non-stop images of…
Trim Season is for people who enjoy marijuana. I'm not one of those types. I don't even like smoking cigarettes, and this movie has almost non-stop images of smoking. I've never been able to understand the logic of deliberately poisoning your lungs since, you know, you sorta need them. But anyway, back to the movie.Trim Season is about, yes, trimming marijuana plants. The farm that finds a bunch of young women doing just this is ran by what I guess is an older lady druid, or a witch of some type. Said druid witch and the young female workers clash, and that's pretty much it. There's not much more to the story than this.The stoner characters are annoying, the script is not-compelling, there is no sense of dread or horror involved, and the ending is a hot mess. Heck, there's not even any eye candy to keep you interested. But... there's plenty smoking!3/10 - too much smoking not enough entertainment.
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★ 1 / 10
Not Really Horror, Just Waste of Time
BonesMacenz
Lured in by the smoke and fire and mysterious trailer. What a lie. This movie stinks as bad as a pot house.It's not really a horror movie or a slow burner.…
Lured in by the smoke and fire and mysterious trailer. What a lie. This movie stinks as bad as a pot house.It's not really a horror movie or a slow burner. There's no plot, or it's so weak and poorly executed, I didn't notice it. Just a bunch of woke young adults smoking weed and acting high and stupid. If I employed trimmers who smoked more than they trimmed, they'd be deep sixed too.The filming was amateur. The movie tried so hard to paint the Redwood Forest like some grizzly dark place filled with backwoods monsters. The movie did however accomplish establishing that the characters were just city brats who ignorantly bought into every misconception, misunderstanding, and disrespect for nature, wilderness, and people who live there. What we might think of as a typical city snob.Where's the plot? What's the point? What is the story telling us? I don' know. Maybe that you shouldn't write and produce a movie while under the influence of weed and alcohol. I think I have an idea what they tried to say, but this movie is so poorly executed, I can only guess. It's just a strung together series of senseless scenes with bad background music. I think they were trying to have scenes to make an existing high/trip more trippy. It failed. They're just weird and boring.No way ever would I recommend this movie, it's a complete fail.Tip: When writing while high, write down ideas then review them when you sober up.
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TOMATOMETER
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AUDIENCE
4.4/10
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Where's the Subtitle request button gone off to?