Short of the Week

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Comedy Harris Wittels & Armen Weitzman

The Badger's Promise

Six friends embark on a mushroom trip together.

Play
Comedy Harris Wittels & Armen Weitzman

The Badger's Promise

Six friends embark on a mushroom trip together.

The Badger's Promise

Directed By Harris Wittels & Armen Weitzman
Made In USA

We’ve all been there right? Tripping on mushrooms, in someone’s backyard, convinced we just saw aliens. No? Ok, so Armen Weitzman and Harris Wittels’ The Badger’s Promise isn’t a short that’s universally relatable and their style of stoner-comedy won’t be to everyone’s taste, but those of us looking for their drug-infused comedy a little darker, are in for a treat.

Opening with an innocent looking scene of a group of friends sitting around a kitchen table tucking into sandwiches, we’re soon to discover their snack of choice isn’t stuffed with any traditional filling. Sitting between their two slices of bread are mushrooms…of the magic kind. As the shroom sandwiches are digested and their psychedelic effects start to take hold on this group of six, their night of chilling takes an unexpectedly morbid turn when Armen and Harris believe they’ve had an encounter with an extra-terrestrial.

Having originally wanted to create a feature film, the directorial duo filmed The Badger’s Promise as a sample to showcase their directorial skills. Feeling like a riff-session between friends with a similar sense of humour, although The Badger’s Promise was scripted, it feels like a lot of the dialogue comes from the improv that happened on set. “When you’re tripping, you say weird stuff”, Wittels admitted in an interview with Splitsider, “so we came up with a lot of stuff at the shoot” and it certainly adds to the believability of the film [Not that I would know what tripping on mushrooms is really like, honest Mum!]. More comparable to the likes of Pineapple Express and This is the End (not that The Badger’s Promise is really like either of this films) than the lighter Stoner comedy of Dude, Where’s My Car? or Harold and Kumar, it’s nice to see stoner-comedy served up in a bite-size portion. If The Badger’s Promise was food, it’d be perfect munchies material.