MAN-EATING MUSHROOM MONSTERS BATTLE VACATIONERS IN THE WOODS
★★★☆☆ (Good for One Viewing)
Director: Dave Wascavage
2002
Like it or not, horror director Dave Wascavage (Zombies by Design, Suburban Sasquatch), has joined Wes Anderson and Jean-Pierre Jeunet on the list of filmmakers with their own brand of recognizable work. You can tell Wascavage is very proud of his unique computer graphics, made-by-mom costume designs, and themes regarding our destruction of Earth and the fall of mean people in general. Real estate agents, developers, rich women who eat hot dogs…they’re all targets in his creature features, but none are as amusing to me as the victims in Fungicide, a little film about a scientist who accidentally creates mutant mushrooms adept at WWE wrestling and hand-to-hand combat. If you’re familiar with the director’s work already, you’ll recognize many actors from his other movies—half of whom he is related to. This is just part of the charm of a Wascavage film, where he throws himself headfirst blindly into a project and hopes for the best; and when it fails, he gets back up and does it again. I don’t care if he once made a movie about a bigfoot with a giant dong. This is gumption and Americana and I’m here for it.
When you’re creating characters in story or script, you want to make sure they’re memorable, and Wascavage does his best in Fungicide. There’s the granola hippie woman who says things like pish posh and rents out her "mountain cabin" to multiple strangers at a time. There’s also the former professional wrestler with an anger management problem, the greedy real estate agent who wants to steal the hippie woman’s land, and a daffy scientist who was forced to stay at the cabin by his mother, who just wants to get him out of her basement for a few days. Wascavage is one of those writers who can’t deviate from main character traits. The wrestler is always a perturbed doofus, the scientist is always cross-eyed and loony, and the hippie woman recites a steady stream of affirmations about the joys of nature. Then there’s the “multimillionaire real estate agent” (played by Dave Wascavage) who is constantly rubbing his hands and licking his chops at the idea of stealing her property, though he has no legal avenue to do so. He simply threatens her and runs into the house, but I’m guessing there’s a whole backstory not in the movie. Fungicide—like the director’s other films—doesn’t explain a lot because you’re supposed to read his mind.
When the scientist (Silas) arrives at the cabin, he accidentally spills a vial of goo onto some mushrooms, turning them into sentient, flesh-eating creatures with sharp teeth. Eventually, there’s a final battle between man and mushroom, and this is where Wascavage pulls out the big guns: his primitive computer graphics, a result of autodidacticism. They spice up a scene when you’re getting a little bored, and that’s his biggest strength, really. Wascavage knows when to change up shots and add something wild. Just when I’m getting comfortable with our few characters, a soldier named Major Wang pops out of the woods with a cameraman. As the big battle drags on, there’s a twist—little do our protagonists know that there’s a secret weapon against these delicious adversaries.
I’m sure people are curious about why Wascavage made this. Maybe he really loved Attack of the Killer Tomatoes or maybe he had some bad mushrooms on his pizza and is seeking revenge. Whatever the reason, I’m happy not knowing. Fungicide doesn’t bore because you’re left fascinated by its existence. This is a movie where a main character spontaneously combusts and no one bats an eye. This is a movie where a mushroom squirts...mushroom juice(?) at an opponent as a defense mechanism. This is a movie where a human head is replaced with a pumpkin with a face drawn on it and we’re not supposed to notice. This is a movie where one of the actors starts laughing during a take. I do have to remind readers that if you don’t like watching good-bad horror, you’ll be miserable. Like David Wascavage’s other works, Fungicide is to be appreciated as a novelty, you can’t go in thinking you’re going to watch an actual film. Fungacide reminds you of a childhood spent playing with Dad’s camcorder, and isn’t feeling like a kid again a good thing?
GENRES: Feminist-Friendly, Funny, Monster/Creature, What the Fuck Was That
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