Stoner horror may be one of the smallest subgenres. Movies where weed is the problem really began and ended with reefer madness “just say no to the Devil’s cabbage, kids” educational flicks. Since then, there’s been eight Evil Bong flicks, but one ill-conceived franchise does not a genre make.
Trim Season, the latest from Austin-based terror specialists Paper Street Pictures, comes up with a nightmare blunt rotation that’s deeply enshrined in stoner culture and cannabusiness. It’s a fairy-tale-tinged trip to the woods: more specifically, California’s Emerald Triangle, center to the less-than-wholly-legal weed industry. Emma (Million, Sick) and Julia (Essoe, Starry Eyes The Pope’s Exorcist) are two big-city women down on their luck who end up amidst the redwoods because they need the money – the big cash that can come from working in the trimming shed, drying the sticky icky and separating the profitable bud from the worthless leaves and stem. This farm’s looking for high-profit, high-quality product, yo, and if a little blood has to be spilled to get it, then that’s just the fertilizer required, bruh.
While an opening scene makes it clear that there’s something supernatural in the smoke, Trim Season quickly evolves into something closer to a survival horror. In her feature directing debut, longtime production designer Ariel Vida creates a grimy oppressiveness. She quickly dismantles the women’s idea that they’re heading into some pastoral party, even if she does pull off a cheeky homage to waving-fields-of-corn era Terrence Malick in that precredit scene. This is the NorCal of Sasquatch, Joshua Rofé’s Hulu series about the lawless frontier where drug gangs use myths and fear to cover up their criminal enterprises. This isn’t the chill world of nice old stoners, but a place of armed guards, menacing shadows, and no easy way home. Honestly, if anyone decides to remake Straw Dogs a second time, this would be fertile ground, and Veda keeps a dark aura of implied sexual violence always at the edge of the drama.
That supernatural opening is echoed by the surprisingly High Gothic presence of Mona (Badler), the estate manager – if the estate happened to the Castle of Otranto. It’s an awkward juxtaposition with the down-and-dirty life on the farm, and the gothic wins out in a third act that is oddly formal even as it goes into full freakout mode. However, the meltdown does not rely on lazy psychedelic imagery to get inside your brain. Instead, it’s that loss of physical control, the creeping slippiness of being really, unpleasantly high that feeds into the underlying idea that you’re no longer running your own show. Vida shows smart restraint on the stoner symbolism, instead blending wilderness paranoia, black magic trickery, and some genuinely innovative gore effects to open up the possibilities of this underpopulated subgenre. There are definitely worse ways to get the fear.
This article appears in June 7 • 2024.
