Star Leaf

The movie is as bad as the plot sounds. Aliens growing weed for some special people, testing them out, bla bla.

I'm going to go into very few words here, it has no horror elements, tries to induce some tension, some mystery, fails each time, ends predictably. Luckily for me, it has only 75 minutes, so there is an upside to it. The movie itself is avoidable! Only if you're into weed movies, could this pass as a junky cheesy fun!

I'm also quite done with stereotypes, all of them present here, the smoker, running away from responsibility, the girl, always trashy and the war "veteran", still facing his inner demons. Can't we do something betters, I mean it is 2016 almost, how many such copy cat movies are we supposed to endure?

Cheers!

Bottom line: This wasn't worth the watch.

I didn't have expectations for Star Leaf to be a *good* film, but I did expect it to be a *fun* film we watched around 420. I really like Russell Hodgkinson in Z-Nation and it seemed like they cast him in a similar role for this.

The good news is that Russell Hodgkinson's character is still pretty funny, but he doesn't actually get much screen time. Also, like a lot of these sorts of scifi movies, the park ranger is pretty weird and funny too. He also get's very little screen time. Star Leaf is mercifully short, so it has that going for it too.

The story is disjointed, the hallucinations aren't done well, and the "overall driver" they reveal later in the film just feels strange and forced. It felt like, for the most part, they forgot about what the description of the movie was and just shoehorned in some stuff about it periodically.

Ignoring the terrible story, you will *hate* all the main characters and their acting is atrocious on top of it.

If you keep the world, Russell Hodgkinson, and Richard Cranor (park ranger) then it could be a pretty fun TV show.

There is almost nothing to like about this movie. I will give credit to some decent cinematography and some decent (for the budget) special effects. Literally everything else about this movie is terrible. I'd say the writing is the major culprit. Not funny, not scary, not coherent, not dramatic, not interesting. Just a pile of nothing. The movie is mercifully short, at least.

I just want to say, for the record, I give B movies every possible concession. It takes a lot for me to hate on a low-budget movie like this. This movie just sucks. A lot.

Soldier with combat stress is led by his stoner friends into a forest to partake of a legendary drug, and weird dangers emerge from the undergrowth.

Surprising low budget sci-fi hallucinatory type of thing with a message about coming to terms. It doesn't look great, but it's not tediously trippy and the modest effects deliver the menace pretty well. The acting is decent, and while the characters aren't deep there is some nice idiosyncrasy. And the pace is good.

The only thing I didn't like was the music - sounded like an '80s TV show.

Overall good entertainment and good natured.

For me personally, I felt the story was a bit flimsy. I get the bringing in elements of extraterrestrial/ contact point, I loved the whole pot from outer space thing, I even respect the bringing in the whole returning, fragile soldier in need, it was the characters themselves. They seemed only mildly developed. At times I just didn't connect with their personal story. Other times the characters and the moments were just spot on!. Directing and the creativity are pretty cool in "Star Leaf". I haven't really scene films on this kind of high outside of Full Moon Horror.

The special effects for the most part are pretty hokey for the most part. But I think that it was intended and even celebrated by the team behind "Star Leaf". This is really meant for a nice, sometimes disturbing trip "through the crack", or say, "down the rabbit hole". The aliens were cool, and done enough to were they didn't seem completely CGI, often they looked more like practical design. All the extra paranormal/supernatural CGI was used in a trippy, hallucinatory aspect that even though it comes off a bit cheap, it still is fun and entertaining.

Overall "Star Leaf" is an entertaining, 420 staple. I mean it is better than "Evil Bong" and I get high to that quite a bit. The ending is a more "life lesson" , hallmark moment situation that, I am sorry, but I thought was a bit lame. Plus when the ending is delivered to us I kind of felt the whole movie was built up around that ending concept and its message. I didn't get any real horror from "Star Leaf" , some definite thriller moments, but I love aliens, and pot. Plus anything that spotlights the emotional and psychological conditions a lot of our soldiers return home in is dope! Pun intended!