The Overlook Film Festival 2023 Film Review – Trim Season (2023)

Seasonal hemp harvesters fall foul of a supernatural drug baroness in this transgressive horror engulfed in a miasma of ganja smoke and astonishing amounts of lovingly lensed weed porn.

Mild-mannered Emma is down on her luck. Broke, jobless, and soon-to-be homeless she meets an Emerald Triangle labour recruiter in a local dive bar. Seduced by the promise of fast cash and an endless buffet of all-you-can-smoke weed she decides to sign up for two weeks of intensive bud trimming on a secret marijuana mountain.

Accompanied by her best friend, the relentless hedonist Julia, she joins up with an eclectic all-female crew of pot-heads to work for the utterly bonkers Mona and her two shady sons.

Innovative director Ariel Vida embraces drug culture to the point of fetishism in her arthouse horror fantasy Trim Season. As a result, we are invited to inhabit a spliff-shrouded space where characters wear magic mushroom print leggings, puff on hybrids called “Wet Dream”, and shout “wake and bake!” when distributing breakfast reefers.

After a satisfyingly bloody opening, the film settles into a steady rhythm of world-building as we get to know the group of skunk snippers and their sketchy taskmasters. This section of Trim Season will prove too languid for some horror hounds but we are introduced to enough character flaws, medical irregularities, and melodramatic musings to keep things interesting. Indeed, some of the revealed backstories are as potent as the weed as our young protagonists turn their work and living space into a rustic hot box.

Mercifully, Trim Season plays it straight avoiding the puerile tone of pot “comedy” horrors such as Evil Bong. Although the cannabis angle is nothing if not comprehensive the film manages to remain relatable by avoiding impenetrable in- jokery. Consequently, the characters become no more annoying than they are supposed to be and we gain a degree of investment in the wilfully ludicrous plot.

The camera work is resourceful in finding ways to beautify the exhaustive weed worship and the film looks frequently pretty and occasionally ravishing. Shrewd set decisions, Vida was on production design duties for Benson & Moorhead’s exhilarating Something in the Dirt, and stimulating lighting succeed in making Trim Season look more expensive than its budget. However, an over-reliance on blurry focus to represent intoxication wears thin and may elicit the odd “whitey” in viewers attempting a when-in-Rome smoke along.

All the performers look like they are having a blast whether they are screaming, smoking, or laying the smack down and the film is cleverly cast.

Bethlehem Million, brilliant in the COVID slasher picture Sick, proves once again that she is no slouch when it comes to the physical aspects of her craft. Million makes sure Emma’s short journey from shrinking violet to violent mutineer stays grounded and believable.

Bex Taylor-Klaus is also excellent as the complex Dusty as they deliver a powerful and touching portrait of vulnerability in the face of prejudice and terrorisation. It is a performance that helps counterbalance the tonal perspective of the film in that it brings credibility to the crackpot craziness.

Jane Badler is well known for villainous portrayals, she was the evil reptilian Diana in the 80’s mini-series V, and she certainly gives it both barrels here with her committed turn as the excruciatingly weird Mona. She captures with exuberant glamour and panache the barely suppressed malevolence of a woman capable of crushing all in her path. Her wardrobe is a joy, not least the most excessive pearl necklace in cinema history.

Once the herbal horticulturalists show their true colours Trim Season engages the B-movie burners for a confounding yet entertaining denouement. There is some gnarly gore to enjoy courtesy of meaty practical effects work and a touch of thoroughly tasteless organ abuse. It’s a frantic and fanciful final third that’s never dull but isn’t helped by a clumsy twist ending that teeters on the threshold of genre platitude.

Trim Season won’t be everybody’s cup of herbal tea but horror fantasy fans up for a psychoactive field trip could do a lot worse than Ariel Vida’s woozy cannabinoid apocalypse.

★★★

World Premiere
Fantasy Horror | USA, 2023 | The Overlook Film Festival 2023 | Cert. TBC | 100 mins | Paper Street Pictures| Dir. Ariel Vida | With: Bethlehem Million, Alex Essoe, Ally Ioannides, Bex Taylor-Klaus, Jane Badler