My quick rating - 5.3/10. We start in North Canterbury in 1982, and I know that because The Weed Eaters helpfully tells me so in large letters on the screen. A couple soon break out an old jar of weed and light up, although the stuff doesn't seem to have quite the relaxing effect on the dude that marijuana is generally advertised to provide. Let's just say the munchies are about to take a very dark turn. Wrong kind of munchies, lol.
We then jump ahead to a new group of pot-smoking friends heading into the wops for a New Year's Eve trip. Jules (Alice May Connolly) is traveling with her new boyfriend and his two stoner mates when they stumble across a long-abandoned stash in an old shed. They do what any responsible group of young adults would do when finding mystery weed in a creepy old shed. Smoke it.
After a quick session and an accidental murder, the marijuana turns them into enthusiastic cannibals. And rather than deal with the whole accidental-murder situation like normal people, they decide the best way to cover the evidence is to keep toking and devour the body. Problem solved! Well...sort of.
Of course, we get the happy music montage while the group gets stuck into their freshly acquired supply of human meat. Because nothing says wholesome New Year's Eve quite like a bunch of stoners cheerfully eating their dead host.
The obvious question is...what happens when the meat runs out? And perhaps more importantly, who gets to be the next victim?
The Weed Eaters is a low-budget horror comedy that goes all-in on the comedy rather than trying to make the cannibalism particularly horrific or dramatic. There are plenty of practical blood effects, and there's something undeniably amusing about watching these idiots progressively convince themselves that eating the evidence is a perfectly reasonable course of action.
The thing is that the jokes aren’t going to work for everybody. Personally, I thought that it was a rather uneven attempt. There were some bits that were great, but there were others that just didn’t seem to work. It’s a kind of dark humor that’s just wonderful in its sheer morbidity.
However, there is certainly something to be said about a movie on a shoestring budget that knows precisely what kind of ridiculousness it is aiming for. Weed Eaters isn't trying to revolutionize the genre of cannibal horror. They are essentially wondering what would have happened if a group of stoners figured out that murder could be turned into an all-you-can-eat buffet.
The answer is messy, occasionally funny, and probably not something you want to try at home.
