Eden Lake

This was quite good fun to write. Remarkably, the movie got decent reviews from proper critics. Which I suppose just shows that I should have their jobs.

Eden Lake

Eden Lake is a truly awful movie. A horror movie which doesn’t scare. A torture movie which doesn’t shock. All in all, a waste of time and money for both makers and viewers.

The premise is this: a perfect West London couple (Michael Fassbender & Kelly Reilly) head to the country for a perfect romantic weekend. Unfortunately, their peace is disturbed by a particularly unruly gang of youths, led by Brett (Jack O’Connell). So far, so plausible. But then, after a mishap involving a dead dog, the youths are transformed into knife-wielding maniacs, determined to capture, torture and kill the hero and heroine, who must flee through the dark and scary woods.

From here, the plot – capture, escape and degradation of our sweet Hammersmith heroine – unfolds with all the innovation and unpredictability of an episode of Scooby Doo, though – alas – without that format’s brevity.

This plot is not aided by James Watkins’ confused direction. There are repeated shots of something watching from the bushes, despite the fact that the villains of the piece are just down the beach, and clearly not in those bushes. There is a sequence in which the heroine tries to make a call via the phone of her fiancé using Bluetooth, something which I am not even sure is possible, and at any rate is depicted in a baffling amount of detail. Meanwhile, the scene in which Fassbender scrambles over a rooftop to escape from Brett’s violent father would be more in keeping with a Noel Coward farce than a horror movie.

On a more positive note, the standard of acting is generally passable. In the undemanding early scenes, Fassbender and Reilly are convincingly childish. Meanwhile, Jack O’Connell battles manfully against a script which offers him no transition period from annoying teenager to psychotic killer; he is able to introduce a slightly more subtle blend of madness, remorse and social commentary to his performance.

Brett aside, the social commentary is crude, blunt and unconvincing. Much, indeed, like the violence, the direction and the movie as a whole.