NZIFF 2025 Craccum Coverage | The Weed Eaters

Review by Harry Bradshaw

Okay, I’m going to break the fourth wall here. For those who don’t know how Craccum reviews work, they’re basically deals with the devil: you get a free ticket to a show in exchange for your mental labour, your text output, your study disruption, and your heavily spiked cortisol levels leading up to your 24-hour submission deadline. Deceptively, they’re a lot of work.

I’m the kind of person who’ll sign up to review a film I know nothing about just because it has ‘Weed’ in the title. Before 9 PM yesterday, The Weed Eaters was to me little more than a limp, horrible obligation I had sic’d on myself. God, I was so wrong.

In its plot synopsis alone, The Weed Eaters is a stoner masterpiece: four slacker adults, vacationing in rural Canterbury, are thrust into a cannibalistic plot after toking up on freaky weed. Does that not sound awesome?! Seeing this no-context was an insane treat. Like, transcendental. This film behaves exactly how it should, in the best way, yet still exceeds all expectations.

Shot locally and on a stringbean budget, TWE is strikingly kiwi. Here, I’ll word vomit things I love: the costuming (shoutout Jules’ pom-pom sweater, Brent’s office-siren glasses, Campbell’s electric-blue farmer flannel), the landscape and Southern Alps, the character archetypes, the audio and soundtrack, Paul Kean of the Bats’ cameo, the use of light, of montage, and dry humour. Everything is so recognizable, making TWE’s horror richer, its jokes funnier.

TWE takes its flesh-eating-potheads seriously. It’s masterfully and creatively shot, bacchanalistic. High off their heads and hearts, the characters appear bloated, distorted, corpse-like, and drawn. There’s a lot of really good gore, a lot of ritualistic meat preparation, close-ups of goblets of wine and flies on days-old, fecund flesh. Parts of it are also weirdly hot.  

It’s hard to resist the urge to compare TWE to films like Black Sheep, What We Do In The Shadows, and Boy, though really what these films have in common is that they’re from here and they’re good. Our film scene is tiny, underfunded, and underdeveloped –TWE, as another entry in our film canon, is hopeful and beautiful. It's 81 minutes of cannibal weed, serving as a signal of Aotearoa’s talent, originality, and creative potential.