| Jenny and her boyfriend Steve take trip out to a remote lake for a romantic weekend. Once there they relax on the waterfront only to have their idyllic peace shattered by a group of unruly youths. Steve, who has reasons for wanting this to be the perfect weekend, approaches the youths with a polite request for them to tone down their behaviour, what he gets is pure ignorant hostility, but it is merely the start of what will become terror unbound.Eden Lake quite literally could have come from the pages of the tabloid newspapers that land on the doorsteps daily of millions of homes in Great <more> Britain. Such is the state that the British Isles has got itself into with the youth of today, Eden Lake may well be an exploitation picture, but it's also one of the most astutely tuned into the times films to have come out of Britain for many a year. Interesting that writer/director James Watkins has said that he wrote Eden Lake long before the depressing number of incidents involving knife crimes started making front page news, but what he has failed to mention is that the incidents, and the unruly violence perpetrated by Britain's youth, has been escalating since the early 1990s. So with that, it actually makes Watkins film a critically cautionary tale about bad parenting and class hatred, this in spite of some foolish British critics claiming that Eden Lake is merely fuelling generation wars, no it isn't! It's just not sticking its head in the sand is all.Anyway, the film is excellent, the sub-genre that encompasses your every day folk coming under attack from the unruly is hardly a new thing, think Straw Dogs, Hills Have Eyes, Deliverance, Them and etc, but Eden Lake manages to homage the best of those influences whilst adding impetus with gritty realism and darkly disturbing acts of violence. Kelly Reilly and Michael Fassbender are Jenny and Steve respectively, both actors are tremendous and thankfully it looks like both of them wont be short of work in the next few years. But really it's with the young actors that Eden Lake leaves it's indelible mark. Shane Meadows muse Thomas Turgoose {This Is England & Somers Town} plays, what's for him, a restrained role, but it's highly effective, yet ultimately all in the piece play second string to Jack O'Connell {also This Is England} as Brett, a horror creation {reality} that outstrips the Krueger's and Ghost Face's of this cinematic world, with O'Connell giving a terrifyingly great performance.Eden Lake is not perfect, the usual exasperations that come with the genre still show their hands, why do that? Why didn't you do this? And on it goes, but really we will all be very very lucky to find a horror picture that ticks every box of the discerning viewer. Also it's fair to say that Eden Lake smacks of being a Descent clone in structure, yes it is {Watkins has interestingly written The Descent: Part 2}, but what is most evident about the parallels between the two great British pictures is that The Descent clearly has fake monsters invading the real people, Eden Lake has real everyday monsters that could well be in your neighbourhood, Brett may even be the kid going out with your daughter, or even be your own undisciplined son.............10/10 <less> |
