Other Titles • The Acid House • The Granton Star Cause (1996)
Synopses for The Acid House (1998)
1.
A trio of stories adapted by Irvine Welsh (TRAINSPOTTING) from his collection of stories of the same name, THE ACID HOUSE is an absurd and brutal look at life through the eyes of one of the most prominent Scottish authors of the 1990s. The film begins with "The Granton Star Cause," which stars Stephen McCole as Boab, a listless loser who meets god in a bar and is promptly changed into a fly for his lack of ambition. The second story, "A Soft Touch," is the incredibly bleak tale of Johnny, a hapless young man who allows his wife to carry on numerous extramarital affairs, and how his life is thrown into turmoil when a self-assured neighbor moves in next door. The final section of the film is the title story, which stars Ewen Bremner as Coco, a raver who ingests a heroic amount of LSD one night, is struck by lightning, and promptly switches bodies with a newborn infant. By turns depressing, mordantly funny, and deliriously surreal, THE ACID HOUSE fully lives up to its author and screenwriter's pedigree.
2.
"The Acid House" is a surreal triptych adapted by "Trainspotting" author Irvine Welsh from his acclaimed collection of short stories. Combining a vicious sense of humor with hard-talking drama, the film reaches into the hearts and minds of the chemical generation, casting a dark and unholy light into the hidden corners of the human psyche.
3.
In The Acid House director Paul McGuigan adapts three Irvine Welsh short stories. These are set in an unflinchingly depicted world of grey, breeze block tenements, wiry psychos, short leather skirts, beer, fags and drugs, kinky sex in badly wallpapered lounges, random violence, hideous-looking babies, raves, footy, discarded crisp packets and barely intelligible dialogue featuring the occasional use of non-profanity.
"The Granton Star Clause" tells the unhappy tale of wee, pasty-faced Boab Doyle, who in one long, unhappy sequence loses his place in the football team, his girlfriend, his job and gets kicked out of the house by his parents, before an encounter with God (here, a hard-bitten, lager-quaffing Maurice Roeves) leads to a surreal, Kafka-esque conclusion. The second tale, "A Soft Touch", is gruellingly and well portrayed but pointlessly depressing. Kevin McKidd plays Johnny, a supermarket employee with an appalling slag-hag of a girlfriend who takes up with his new, violently psychotic and parasitical neighbour Larry. Will he stand up for himself? The answer will leave you thoroughly unsatisfied. Finally, there's "The Acid House", the funniest but silliest of the three tales in which Ewan Bremner plays an obnoxiously livewire Hibs fan who takes one too many tabs and ends up being transported into the mind of stereotypically middle-class couple's--Martin Clunes and Jemma Redgrave--baby.
The Acid House is compulsive but bleak, exhilarating but ambivalent. The viewer is asked to bring their own moral compass to these stylised yet non-judgemental episodes. Fans of Trainspotting, however, will certainly find much of the scintillating same here.
On the DVD: disappointingly, only the trailer is featured here. However, the DVD transfer in letterbox format is impeccable, used to its best advantage in the more surreal, fast-cut music video-style sequences, while the soundtrack, featuring The Verve and Primal Scream among others, also benefits. --David Stubbs
Mooviees.com is not the official site for this film.
All editorial views and opinions expressed here are for entertainment purposes only.
Movie Database
In Theaters
