The Acid House

Plot synopsis:
The 1998 film, directed by Paul McGuigan, dramatises three stories from the book:
"The Granton Star Cause" is a comedy, where Boab is having a very bad day indeed. His parents throw him out so they can indulge in sado-masochism and he is sacked from his job, dumped by his girlfriend and dropped from his football team. It has elements of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis. One of the characters is a pitiless and profane God, who transforms him into a fly as punishment for wasting his life.
"A Soft Touch": Kevin McKidd plays a cuckolded husband while Gary McCormack is Larry, the ruthless upstairs neighbour who steals his electricity and his wife, played by Michelle Gomez.
"The Acid House": An acid trip and a bolt of lightning result in amiable schemie Coco Brice exchanging bodies with the baby of a middle class couple.
All three sections are independent, but are linked by setting and by the reappearance of incidental characters, in particular Maurice Roëves who appears variously as an inebriated wedding guest, a figure in a dream, and a pub patron. All three of his parts symbolise a human manifestation of God.
The film offended elements of the UK tabloid press with a depiction of a cynical and jaded, foul-mouthed God. In some English-speaking countries (such as Canada and the United States) it has been screened with subtitles because of the heavy Edinburgh accents.

Tags: comedy, murder, cult, flashback, psychedelic, romantic, revenge

Review:
"The Acid House" is a series of three short stories penned by "Trainspotting" novelist Irvine Welsh, and true to his style, it is inspired by a terribly bad acid trip.
Being a huge fan of Irvine Welsh, I had high hopes for this film, but I was also aware that it would most likely not be as good as Trainspotting.
It wasn't, but a good movie all the same.The first story is about a 23 year old soccer player who is booted out by his mates, gets kicked out of his parents house, looses his girlfriend, and looses his job all in the space of a few hours.
Has all the usual Irvine Welsh ingredients - scabby parts of Edinburgh like Pilton, lots of colourful language, plenty of violence, sex/nudity and masses of humour.
I watch a lot of extreme cinema and am always wary of fakery and sensationalism, but I felt that The Acid House had the intelligence and heart needed to back up its shocking stories.
"Trainspotting" is, I think, a better film overall, but this one sure gains points for audacity, intensity, and wit..
What I am having a go at are independant British film makers - None of whom were brought up on sink estates - who think people are going to pay good or bad money to go the cinema to watch sensationalist rubbish like THE ACID HOUSE.
Who in their right mind wants to watch 3 short plotless films about nothing in particuler , full of explicit sex and extreme swearing when they can sit at home and experience similiar things.
There are some very funny scenes including an ingenious answer to a lack of electric power and a stupid argument about the colour cerise.Story 3 is more of a character study of a young man called Coco suffering from a drug over-dose.
Irvine Welsh's follow up to Trainspotting hits the screen as three short stories set in Edinburgh, all with a few of Welsh's trade marks, drug culture, depression, the working class and Hibernian football club.
All three stories are gritty and realistic, but not overly stylised, and this gives the film the feeling of the earlier trainspotting but thankfully with less of the 'cool factor'.
Although the stories are anything but realistic as far as storyline is concerned, the acting, locations and look make the characters feel totally believable.
If you are easily offended then be warned - you will see things that you will not expect, but the great part is that you never feel that anything was cut out - this film goes there and then goes further.Fantastic performances by the actors, a brilliantly well selected soundtrack and truly terrifying storytelling by the master Irvine Welsh, this is a great example of British Filmaking at its best.I am intrigued by the fact that the US version needs subtitles, and i am glad that so many people outside the UK have had the chance to experience some no-holds-barred modern British storytelling.
Set in the urban decay of lower-class areas of Scottish cities, this film has some really funny scenes in it, but also some that make you feel like scum for belonging to the human race.
And there is plenty Coco Bryce's bouncing around as well as the odd Larry looking for trouble.I don't see why people slate this film for not being the 'trainspotting2' the wanted?!
WHERE DOES IT SAY THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE TRAINSPOTTInG2?To be honest I prefer the acid house to train spotting anyway because i feel it is a better likeness to the sort of people named 'lower class' who make up a large part of our population in Edinburgh.
which both films try to explain and i think acid house does a better job!Everyone here who commented from outside Scotland say they are offended by it, its not just a sick twisted movie.
This is an actual account of many peoples experiences and lifes.......think about that next time u slate it.Because I know you wouldn't say that to them personally.Well done a great movie!!!.
Praise the Lord because the product was a much darker, grittier second film called The Acid House, three short stories whose common ground is the Scottish working classes.
In spite of this, director Paul McGuigan, superbly brings Welsh's other two stories to life and it's surely praise indeed when one can exclude a full third of a movie and still class it as one of their all time favourites.
But as if all that wasn't enough laughter for one day the film offers up a riotously funny finale whereby Boab catches his parents in the middle of a kinky sex role-play in the living room accompanied by Barry Adamson's suitably seedy The Vibes Aint Nothing But The Vibes.
Acid House written by Irvine Welsh(the best modern writer)is a brilliant "short stories" novel.The movie however is pretty disappointing.I expected it to be somewhat like Trainspotting,the classic Welsh adaptation and one of the best movies ever made.The stories are not as good as they were written down.The acting makes it up a little and the Scottish dialogues are great.
Although there are some, but not many, funny moments in this movie I couldn't understand more than about 15%(the fancy English couple in the 3rd story included) of what people were saying.
Irvine Welsh's stories are one thing, but no-one can doubt that the phenomenal success of Trainspotting was largely down Boyle's sublime direction and the energetic young cast.
Like Trainspotting a mere year before it, The Acid House adopts the approach of telling a groggy and visually disgusting tale about Scottish people living lives full of drugs, sex and the like in locations that visually repulse you.
The Acid House sees its characters pretty much inhabit locations akin to this one 80% of the time and the characters get up to all sorts of equally repulsive activities like unknowingly eating food covered with essence of dog faeces and being buggered by a woman complete with strap on.
The Acid House grants us outdoor scenes but has the characters spinning round uncontrollably and presents a lot of its shots in close up format complete with odd angles and fast edits - you could be forgiven for feeling sick.The Acid House was penned by Trainspotting writer Irvin Welsh and follows a similarly dank and downbeat style of storytelling and setting.
This time the film is split up into three shorts rather than one continuous narrative alá Trainspotting which some others might tell you felt like two stories given the path involving the drug deal the film decides to go down right nearer the end.
A lot of the ambiguity is missing in The Acid House; whereas when Renton went down the toilet and came home soaking wet, there's no obvious link that he literally went down the toilet in order to get wet whereas when the character of Coco (Bremner) is struck by lightening, he has transformed into someone else's body and that's a clear cut reason for the story to even happen.
It's not so much a criticism as it is a perspective; the ambiguity worked well in Trainspotting and added to the overall tone of the humour whereas The Acid House crosses the line and tells us that this sort of thing is possible in the film's universe.
I have to say that I preffered it when it was ambiguous.The Acid House's first story provides good ammunition for Claire Monk's theory about the British male in crisis in the 1990s.
But a meeting with God (Roëves) in a pub, again giving the film a clear cut surrealistic feel rather than ambiguously so, sees him changed into a fly to wreck revenge.
On the flipside, the film takes a good actor like Bremner and has him lie in a bed screaming for most of the time.
I've seen a lot worse but The Acid House isn't a great film; it's grimy and unpleasant but isn't as brilliant as it might think it is..
"The Acid House" is a reminder of that short period of time when drunk, violent, sexually perverted and/or drug-addicted Scotsmen were the hippest thing in cinema.
"Trainspotting" had established that kind of hipness and "The Acid House" tried to cash in on that success by bringing some lesser short stories by Irvine Welsh to the big screen.
The Acid House is actually a very colorful, sporadically atmospheric, and so totally over-the-top movie experience that it makes Trainspotting look pedestrian.Adapted by Irvine Welsh himself from his own outrageous short story collection the film features three 35-minute stories of depravity, revenge, existentialism, and nihilism.
Larry is one of the funniest, most realistic, characters I've ever seen in any movie and Gary McCormack plays him to absolute perfection.
His impromptu musical number as he sings 'Hot Love' by T-Rex and Marc Bolan is just plain brilliant.The third and final story features Colin 'Coco' Bryce, a Hibs casual who takes an acid tab and has a very, very bad trip, hallucinating his tyrannical father before being actually struck by lightning.
Spend five minutes in a deprived area of this country (and believe me there is a lot of deprivation) and you'll encounter half of the cast of this film.One of my favorite movies, and I am virtually word-perfect.
There are many other stories in Welsh's collection that can be made into short movies.
Rent this film if you love Irvine Welsh.
I think you need to have read and loved (loved is probably too strong a word) some of Walsh's stuff before appreciating any of the content of this film, and i don't mean just watching trainspotting, thats not enough understanding of how this guy works and thinks.A series of short stories with little real point or moral (by modern standards), however they do touch upon some interesting subjects, for example the drunken and swearing depiction of God, challenges the concept of God's identity, but because he is drunk and foul mouthed it is wholly unacceptable to some people, however, if you were the lead character you'd relate to a God like that better than you would to some dude dressed in brilliant white surrounded by angels playing harps!!I enjoyed it for what it was, took it at face value and thought it was a blast.
It not life as most people know it so therefore we might find it hard to relate to, but it it a creative imagination at work.I think that in some way you have missed out on something very special in independent film making if you don't at least try and watch it!.
Come on people did you really expect another trainspotting,the fact that it's not does not make it a bad movie.I thought the three stories were superbly adapted from the book(credit to paul mcguigan).To make the acid house so soon after trainspotting,with expectations so high the director was always on to a loser.This is a film that is funny(in it's own disturbing,sick and wierd way)but also sad and at times totally realistic.As it's character based it does lack plot but the performances by the actors more than make up for that.So for those who have not seen this film,no it is not trainspotting.But keep an open mind and enjoy.
Aside from this, the third vignette is interesting because it effectively creates a metaphor for the use of acid as "rebirth" Also, I was told by a British friend that a lot of the lower class in England/Scotland live a similar depraved life style, but it is not as ridiculous as what is shown.
I'm gonna have to give this film a bad review to balance out the good ones...First of all, I could only understand about 30% of the dialogue.
I needed to watch the subtitled version I guess -- never knew before that I cannot understand Scottish people speaking the english language.
With The Acid House, you get something completely different, which will have you questioning where did the movie go.
Moviong on: Story 2, I guess the real acid house which involves a squabbling young couple.
At the end of this movie, you'll be in wonderment, or stupefaction, a film slightly better enjoyed on the second view, but The Acid House sours, no Trainspotting.
i see it more as a story that Irvine Welsh shares with us that makes us reflect on how life can be that dodgy and unpredictable.
as for the movie, Trainspotting, again, its nowhere as brilliant as the book, though if youre not brit/scot/irish, you might have a hard time understanding the slang or the language.
If you thought "Trainspotting" was good, brace yourself; this is one of the best films I've ever seen.
Irvine Welsh rocks, and you should read the entire book (there are other stories, some of which are as good, if not better than the three that were adapted for the screen).
However, the book is written in Scottish dialect, which means you'll only understand it if you have a Scottish relative.The last story in the film is the most shocking, and also the best.
I really didn't understand anything from the third one, the first was a Metamorphosis like plot that focuses on the opportunities we are given and choose not to use them, while the second was about this guy who takes incredible abuse from his wife, loves and cares for his baby and in the end forgives the wife and they get back together (for more abuse?!).I would say that this is a movie that tried to capitalize on the enormous success of Trainspotting, but even if these are based on Irwing stories, that doesn't mean they are exceptionally good.
The movie comes with subtitles because sometimes the Irish accent makes the characters nearly unintellagable thru parts, which is a nice touch, but it would've also been nice to be able to shut them off after the first viewing.'The Acid House' is a movie based on the Irvine Welsh book of the same title, using 'The Granton Star Cause', 'A Soft Touch', and 'The Acid House' as the basis for the movie.
The third is about Coco Bryce and his experiences on acid and the lightening storm that follows...The movie itself is great.
(I.e. The ending of 'Acid House', the details in 'Granton Star', all of the other crap that the neighbour partook in 'A Soft Touch') I could see in my mind's eye what happend while the movie was running as it happend in the book, but there were parts that my boyfriend was lost in because he hadn't read the book.In conclusion, I gave this film an 8, which isn't as high up as Trainspotting (a perfect 10 is how I would describe it), but by far isn't a waste of time.
While Trainspotting had a definite plot and characters, this one is simply random stories that have come together in the end.
That is why I have added this collection of stories to my list of books that I would like to own, but not the film.
This cheap way of creating this character thoroughly distracted me from the story, but McGuigan was able to redeem himself with the final scene of this film when CoCo comes back to his body.
There were just scenes that stood out that seemed like they were his classic moments.I enjoyed the way these stories all came together.
I loved the subtitles (that were random throughout my version of the film) that allowed me to fully understand what these characters were saying.
I found this enterataining the humour was quite dark, the acting really good, I think a couple of guys from trainspotting are in it, Tommy and Spud, maybe the third story was just a little bit too long.
a great, somewhat psychedelic trio of films based on the stories of Irvine Welsh.
The best of the three, I think, is not even the title story, The Acid House, instead it is "The Granton Star Cause."  It has a Kafka-like twist in which the pathetic protagonist turns into a fly.
Irvine Welsh lives in Dunfermline, Scotland which is a stones throw from Edinburgh and as I too have lived there "and seen the man himself" I can only say that he depicts a very scary real life image of some of the more unfortunate parts of Edinburgh.Lots of the cast from Small Faces, Trainspotting and "Looking After Jo Jo"If you liked Trainspotting then you will love this..
Anyway what the film is really about is while out drinking the guy in question meets God, who gets annoyed with the guys moaning and turns him into a fly, the film then shows how this guy comes to terms with being a fly and also how he even manages to get his own back on some of the people that done wrong by him when he was human.The second story "The Soft Touch" is a lot more serious.
It's about a guy who is used by everyone (that's why he is the soft touch).He is played by Kevin McKidd (Tommy in Trainspotting).But its the 3rd part of the movie I'm looking forward to "Acid House" it was really funny to read and hopefully it will be as funny to watch as well it's about a character called Coco (Spud in Trainspotting) who while taking drugs one night swaps places with a new born baby.
This leads to some great situations as Coco a heavy drinking nutter becomes trapped in the body of a tiny baby...I'm really looking forward to this I think it should be as good as if not better than the excellent Trainspotting..
Shown as an standalone film recently, The Granton Star Cause is the story of Boab.
The story of Boab appears to be building up to the meeting with God and, although foulmouthed, I thought at first that this would be the guts of the film and would produce some interesting ideas and dialogue.