[yasr_overall_rating]
A woman falls deeper into paranoia after taking a deadly drug.
“Woodshock” is the debut film directed by sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy, shot in the directors’ hometown of Arcata in Humboldt California. Arcata is 280 miles North of San Francisco, a progressive town with Green Party elected officials and Humboldt University. The town stands near the majestic Redwood Forests. In the 1800s, after California’s Gold Rush reserves had been depleted, the gigantic tree’s timber became the commerce savior for Northern California.
The story opens with Theresa (Kirsten Dunst) in the magical dream-like woods, telling a memorable story to her bedridden mother. Her mother is last seen passing joints of slow-burning grass with Theresa and drifts off to sleep. In an unsubtle contrarian coupling, Theresa is married to a recently promoted logger Nick, played by Joe Cole who is deforesting the priceless trees while she works in a carefully cultivated cannabis shop. The shop is owned by Keith himself, a huge nature lover played by Pilou Asbaek, who has his own feelings of disdain for Nick and is enamored with Theresa.
Small details stand out like brewing coffee loudly trickling, the humming of neon in the dispensary, the creeping pitter patter of spider legs climbing up a plant. The soundtrack is gorgeous and eerie, full of almost extraterrestrial like whistles and far out chords moving so much of the beautiful imagery. I was impressed that semi-obscure Indie Rock Boston band Galaxie 500’s ‘Blue Thunder’ was playing in the background of a party scene.
Theresa is ready to escape and tries some super heavy psychedelic liquid that she snags from her job. At first, she unintentionally ingests some while prepping it for a customer and begins levitating. It just so happens Keith is cultivating this as a psychedelic euthanasia hybrid to help his sickly customers in pain move on (better to burn out, than fade away?).
Theresa decides to try some of the extremely potent and potentially deadly hybrid to escape her sadness. The drug’s effects lead her to some overwhelming paranoid and gorgeous hallucinations. During one vision geometrical astral plane like shapes stretch out like call signs from the woods beaming across the screen like comets.
As Jim Morrison said, “what have they done to the earth?” One scene stands out cross-cutting untouched natural beauty with chainsaws grinding up remarkable redwoods that are much too precious to be destroyed. The movie’s message obviously shows man’s destruction of nature.
It just so happens the Mulleavy sisters are fashion designers and their directing shows a lot of promise. The film’s distributor, A24, is one of the boldest studios whose releases have included small projects, and more known films like “Moonlight.” The Mulleavy sisters have a very strong visual sense but the script is minimal and at times, a bit murky. Cleary, A24 believes in their vision and I’ll be curious to see what they do next.
P.S. “Game of Thrones” lovers, in one scene someone does literally pay the iron price!
Now playing in select theaters
