Arguably, The Acid House wouldn’t exist without the international phenomenon of Trainspotting two years earlier. While both are based on Irvine Welsh books, The Acid House is an anthology and arrives adapted by Welsh himself, so “cunt” utterances abound.
“The Granton Star Cause” details the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day of Boab (Stephen McCole, Rushmore). In quick succession, the “lumpen proletariat malcontent” gets booted from his soccer football team, kicked out of his family’s house, dumped by his girlfriend, thrown in jail and fired from work. Nursing his wounds in a pub — where else? — he meets God (Maurice Roëves, Judge Dredd), who gives him the powers of revenge … albeit as a housefly. Let the scatological parade begin!
Joviality downshifts into “The Soft Touch,” a working-class love-ish story of newlyweds/new parents Johnny and Catriona (Trainspotting’s Kevin McKidd and Doom Patrol’s Michelle Gomez, providing the movie’s strongest performances). Here, Welsh dwells in Mike Leigh kitchen-sink squalor, detailing Johnny’s heartbreaking misery as a skeevy, alpha neighbor (Gary McCormack, Valhalla Rising) moves into their building and near-immediately into Catriona. More depressing than funny, the segment at least gives the film an emotional core — one best exemplified by the shoegaze melody of Belle & Sebastian’s “Leave Home,” a number so moving, the soundtrack uses it twice.
Finally, there’s the titular story, starring Ewen Bremner, practically reprising his Trainspotting role of Spud. In a body-swap scenario Hollywood wouldn’t dare touch, his Coco does a hit of acid and switches souls with a newborn baby — no explanation given or needed. Via an animatronic infant more unsettling than those of most horror films, Coco thoroughly enjoys breastfeeding, asks Mum (Jemma Redgrave, Dream Demon) for a beej and pleasures himself from his crib as his parents get frisky in the sheets.
Like “Granton,” this third bit revels in shock value and succeeds, even if first-feature director Paul McGuigan (Victor Frankenstein) lets it go on so long, it’s perilously close to schoolyard juvenilia. Then again, with arrested development running a throughline, that may be the point. To varying degrees, each story overstays its optimal welcome, leaving The Acid House too loose and unfocused to become a classic for the UK’s chemical generation, yet diverting enough for one go-round. Scottish accents come unvarnished, so lest the likes of “nippy wee winger” and “daft sow” reside atop your tongue, subtitles are encouraged. —Rod Lott