Trim Season (Frightfest 2023)(Review)

Cannabis and horror have a complicated relationship that should be no surprise considering that the drug has been the focus of conservative moral panic from the reefer madness of the ‘30s to the D.A.R.E. campaigns of Reagan’s America. The genre has a history of playing on and exploiting the cultural bogeyman that marijuana has often represented, and since as early as 1933’s Narcotic, recreational cannabis users have been portrayed as thrill-killing junkies, mutant blood freaks, and the perfect slash-fodder for many a masked maniac.

Yet horror is also the realm of the strange, the bizarre, the gonzo – and beyond that, you’ll rarely see a genre more dedicated to the development of mood and atmosphere, so in spite of what I may have just led you to believe, there are a lot of elements in horror cinema that appeal to weed smokers. Ariel Vida’s Trim Season is by no means the first “stoner-horror” film (I feel the need to mention that there are nine Evil Bong movies and counting at the time of writing), but it does feel unique in that it’s an attempt at a serious, straightforward frightener, instead of a humorous, THC-laced riff on genre tropes. Having watched the film sober, I can’t exactly imagine someone getting stoned before watching it and having a good time. It’s a fairly grim, sombre, feel-bad affair, with some rather heavy subject matter that I appreciate to a certain degree, but there’s something a little lacking in the execution.

Trim Season follows Emma (musician and actress Bethlehem Million), a young woman who, in exchange for cash and a place to sleep, accepts a job trimming buds at a remote cannabis farm in upstate California, which is run by eccentric matriarch Mona (cult TV favourite Jane Badler). Cut off from the outside world, Emma quickly makes friends with the other girls, including non-binary trimmer Dusty (Bex Taylor-Klaus), and she will spend the next two weeks working, sleeping, eating and smoking with them. Tormented by gun-toting hired hands, screams in the night and rumours of bloody murder in the nearby hills, Emma and her fellow trimmers are already beginning to feel the summertime sadness long before they realise that Mona has ulterior motives for hiring them and that the matriarch’s “personal strain” of cannabis is cultivated using a grisly secret ingredient.

For a film that’s all about dark secrets, it’s obvious that Trim Season is essentially stoner Suspiria – complete with a forest-dwelling witch who is equal parts Helena Markos and Anjelica Huston. It’s a colourful and visually stunning picture that has an appropriately hazy atmosphere, and I applaud the film’s attempts to tackle serious issues – most notably how the criminalisation of marijuana has created unethical and abusive work environments in cannabis production. ‘Tis a pity then, that the film feels a little – if you’ll pardon the expression – half-baked.

There’s something about Trim Season that feels a little unfinished, particularly the numerous trails of thematic breadcrumbs that don’t seem to lead up to anything. With plot threads beginning but never concluding, the relevance of the film’s numerous weed-induced supernatural flashbacks is never really made clear, and even the mythology surrounding the film’s antagonist and her witchy powers feels like a work in progress.

The only exception to this is Dusty (played magnificently by Hell Fest star Taylor-Klaus), a character whose experiences throughout the film are as harrowing as they are resonant and socially relevant. Through Dusty, Trim Season brings to light the lesser-known struggle of modern-day trans existence – sharply and savagely criticising some of the ways in which society perceives non-binary identity in relation to binary gender structures. These parts of the film are grim, almost torturous viewing, and could potentially trigger audience members who have been through similar experiences, and yet I feel as though they’re powerful and unexpectedly profound condemnations of the biases, both conscious and unconscious, that some sadly hold.

I appreciate some of the ideas behind Trim Season, and the vibes are there, but as an actual film, it doesn’t fully deliver. A visually impressive directorial debut from Vida, and it’s clear that she’s got the creative vision, but for me, this joint was more mid than top-shelf.

Robyn’s Archive: Trim Season