A new comedy horror with a $19,000 budget may be the best local release in years, writes Madeleine Chapman.

I really didn’t want to see The Weed Eaters. As a “minuscule-budget stoner horror”, it falls into none of my preferred genres of film. I’m terrified of horrors (can barely watch a thriller) and the only stoner movie I’ve loved is Friday (1995).

So I saw the blurb for The Weed Eaters and thought good on you but not for me.

The night before its NZIFF  premiere, I drank 2x beers and had my arm twisted into seeing it (“just close your eyes if you’re scared”). I have never been so thankful for peer pressure because watching The Weed Eaters with hundreds of other film fans at The Civic was the most fun I’ve had at the movies in a long time, and The Weed Eaters has cemented itself as my favourite local film in recent memory. 

First, the premise: four friends (loose term) go on a New Year’s trip to a shed in rural North Canterbury and find some ancient weed. The weed turns them into cannibals.

That premise would fit right at home in a 48Hrs Film Festival short, and Sports Team (Callum Devlin and Annabel Kean) are mainstayers of the short film festivals with this being their debut feature alongside collaborators Finnius Teppett and Alice May Connolly of Horse Bite, and Samuel Austin. 

All but Devlin act in the film, and between the five of them they cover credits from director (Devlin), cinematographer (Austin), screenplay (Teppett), costume design (Kean) and producer (all but Austin). It’s like if a media studies group project turned professional, and the collective represents a welcome disruption to the local industry.

The Weed Eaters is a perfect example of what can be achieved when creative people have a vision and just really, really want to make it so don’t wait around for permission (or funding). There is the obvious caveat of the filmmakers acknowledging their parents’ support in providing accommodation and filming locations for the movie, but even so, The Weed Eaters releases with a budget a cool million dollars cheaper (at least) than other local features of recent years.

It might have a $19,000 budget (or thereabouts, raised through a Boosted crowdfunding campaign) but it doesn’t look like a cheap film. In fact, thanks to Sports Team’s resume of music videos, every shot in The Weed Eaters looks deliberate, beautiful and clever. There’s a lot of effective playing with light, whether the logistically-nightmarish-but-beautiful golden hour scenes, fireside chats or a particularly fun sequence lit entirely with camera flashes.

I began the movie on edge (it was a dark scene and ominous so I closed my eyes) but the first indication that we were in safe, capable hands was when the central couple Brian and Jules (Teppett and Connolly) speak for the first time. There was no big joke or dramatic delivery, it just sounded like a real interaction that a couple in their 30s would have. And that, ultimately, is what made The Weed Eaters so enjoyable. Beyond the shock of cannibalism and classic horror gore, The Weed Eaters follows four people who feel like real New Zealanders who could only ever be in New Zealand. Where so often it can be cringe-inducing to watch “ourselves” on screen, I felt like I was spying on four friends who I knew rather than watching four people act. 

Connolly and Kean in particular cut right to the core of millennial kiwi (pākehā) women as the new partner entering an established friend group and the caustic longtime friend respectively. 

The movie is 80 minutes long which is short for a feature. And yet it’s the perfect length. There would have surely been scenes and gags that could’ve been stretched out for a few more beats to hit that 90 minute sweet spot but I’m grateful they resisted it. As someone who hates horrors, I can confidently say that The Weed Eaters is far more comedy than horror, and in fact I only had to close my eyes on three brief occasions. Besides, it is genuinely very funny. And blissfully, once the joke has been delivered, the film knows when to move on. 

The only stumble in the 80 minutes is, ironically, at the finish line. While not enough to impact my enjoyment of the rest of the movie, the ending felt a little rushed and is the only hint that everything was made quickly and cheaply. Had they stuck an original landing, it would be a near perfect film. Even without, it delivered on its promises.

There are obvious parallels to draw between The Weed Eaters and the early films of Peter Jackson – Bad Taste and Braindead in particular. The genre, for one, but also the sense that the filmmakers have made something far better than their circumstances should have allowed. It makes me wonder what they could possibly achieve with even a “small” budget, but also makes me fear it too, given the very appeal of this film is in the necessarily intimate way it was made.

Whatever they do next, I’ll be watching and donating to the Boosted campaign. And in the meantime, I’ll swallow my fear of horror movies and happily watch The Weed Eaters again when it inevitably becomes a cult classic.

The Weed Eaters is screening in Wellington (August 16), Dunedin (August 22) and Christchurch (sold out) as part of NZIFF.