Magic mushrooms – psilocybin-laced psychedelics – have been making a comeback in popular culture lately. Now legal in Oregon for medicinal use and in treating PTSD and opioid withdrawal, shrooms have now entered the mainstream consciousness. So, it’s no surprise three recent films all feature revelatory mushroom trips: Nathan Silver’s mordantly funny black comedy Between the Temples; Megan Park’s bittersweet coming-of-age romance My Old Ass; and brother directors David and Nathan Zellner’s surprisingly poignant woolly Bigfoot tale, Sasquatch Sunset.
Magic mushrooms have been featured in a variety of movies through the years, most notably in the 1951 Disney animated feature Alice in Wonderland, where Alice has a psychedelic experience with the Queen of Hearts. shrinking to three inches in height before growing to 10 feet tall. The film was later discovered by ‘60s stoners, as was Disney’s orchestral epic Fantasia, which features seven mushrooms doing a politically incorrect “Chinese Dance” during “The Nutcracker Suite” segment.
Mushrooms are taken in various forms in these 2024 films:
Between the Temples
In Between the Temples, Jason Schwartzman’s clinically depressed cantor Ben interacts with his younger self through a VHS tape of his bar mitzvah he brings to the home of Carla (Carol Kane), who helps him get over the death of his novelist wife, rediscover the voice he lost and form a touching relationship with his one-time music teacher. She brews up mushrooms in the form of a tea, and while the film doesn’t make it obvious, it is clear Ben's experiencing some kind of epiphany as he starts conversing with his 13-year-old self on the static-laden screen.
My Old Ass
A mushroom trip while camping on the eve of her leaving home to attend college in Toronto similarly connects My Old Ass breakout star Maisy Stella from the TV series Nashville with her older self in the guise of the delightfully deadpan Aubrey Plaza, who offers the younger Elliott advice on love and life from 21 years in the future. Ro (Katrice Brooks) provides the caps and stems, which are also cooked into a tea. “May you experience a new level of consciousness tonight," she exults. And that's precisely what takes place, as Elliott wanders through the woods only to confront herself at 39, who warns her to “stay away from a boy named Chad.”
It’s a well-worn trope in films from Tom Hanks in Big to Freaky Friday but made more touching by the winsome performance of Stella, whose confusion over Elliott’s sexual identity leads to a touching hetero romance with cranberry farmer Chad (Percy Hynes White).
Sasquatch Sunset
In the wacky Sasquatch Sunset, the elder Bigfoot munches on some shrooms in the wilderness. The Zellner brothers’ dialogue-less film is for fans of the ape-monolith prologue to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, featuring an unrecognizable Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough in Bigfoot costumes traipsing across a prehistoric landscape, foraging for food, taking dumps, screwing and giving birth.
While laugh-out-loud funny due to its dedication to the four main characters, it’s also surprisingly moving in its depiction of the half-man/half-beast. When the elder stumbles upon a patch of mushrooms, he eagerly takes them for himself, then wanders into the forest, where he’s devoured by a ferocious panther.
Epilogue
From the pot-smoking, cocaine and acid scenes in Easy Rider to the psychedelic concentration camps for all those over 18 in Wild in the Streets to Woody Allen sneezing in a pile of marching powder in Annie Hall, recreational drugs have always found a home in the cinema, serving to normalize the experience. And now that magic mushrooms are having their day in the spotlight, it’s no surprise they’ve become an intriguing narrative device in popular films.
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