Eden Lake - film review

Eden Lake, a film released in 2008, is often described as a thriller, but I'd say that it's closer in mood to a horror movie. There are several very frightening scenes, and a good deal of graphic violence. It's definitely not for the faint-hearted. In the early stages, it resembled In Fear, but it soon takes off in a different, and more explicit direction. Overall, it's a powerful and unsettling.

Steve (Michael Fassbender) takes his girlfriend (Kelly Reilly) on a trip to a quarry lake that is shortly to be redeveloped for a gated development of upmarket housing. A last chance to see a lovely place before it is spoiled. But things start to go wrong very quickly, as Steve antagonises some rather unpleasant locals, whose behaviour, to say the least, makes the option of gentrification seem unexpectedly attractive. (And this is a film that raises some interesting issues about social class that have provoked a diverse range of interpretations.)

A gang of feral teenagers start to terrorise the couple; these are hoodies you definitely wouldn't wish to hug, with a female member of the gang recording her chums' violence on her phone, in a way that, frighteningly, has happened in a number of real life cases. Fassbender is good, but Kelly Reilly, an actor previously unknown to me, is truly excellent. But will she manage to escape the kids hunting her down?

A good article by Alex Hess in the Guardian highlights the horrific aspects of the story. I'm inhibited from saying much more because I don't want to include a spoiler, but suffice to say this is a very dark film indeed. James Watkins wrote and directed, and the screenplay certainly packs a punch Not for the squeamish, that's for sure..