Eden Lake
| Eden Lake | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | James Watkins |
| Produced by | Christian Colson Richard Holmes |
| Written by | James Watkins |
| Starring | Kelly Reilly Michael Fassbender Jack O'Connell Finn Atkins |
| Music by | David Julyan |
| Cinematography | Christopher Ross |
| Edited by | Jon Harris |
Production company | Rollercoaster Films Aramid Entertainment Fund |
| Distributed by | Optimum Releasing |
Release date |
|
Running time | 91 minutes[1] |
| Country | United Kingdom Cayman Islands[2] |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $3,983,997[3] |
Eden Lake is a 2008 British horror film written and directed by James Watkins and starring Kelly Reilly, Michael Fassbender and Jack O'Connell.[4][5]
The film received mostly positive reviews, and was nominated for the Empire Award for Best British Film. It is among a group of roughly contemporaneous films that deal with concerns over "Broken Britain" and a fear of "hoodies".
Plot[edit]
Nursery school teacher Jenny (Kelly Reilly) and her boyfriend, Steve (Michael Fassbender), journey to a remote lake in the wooded English countryside. Hiking to the lakeside, they meet Adam, a young boy gathering insects. Relaxing beside the lake, the setting is disrupted by delinquent teenagers and their dog, who have ridden their bicycles to a spot within a few metres of the young couple. After they sleep overnight in their tent, they find their food infested with insects and their car tire damaged by a bottle left behind by the teens.
Returning to town for breakfast, Steve spots a house with the bikes he thinks belongs to the kids. When no one answers the door, he walks into the house, narrowly escaping as the surly homeowner returns. Back at the lake, Steve goes scuba diving while Jenny sleeps on the shore. Steve returns to find the bag with their car keys, phone and wallet is missing, soon confirming that their car is gone. Returning to town on foot, they avoid collision with their car, driven recklessly through the woods by the gang's sociopathic leader, Brett (Jack O’Connell).
Finding the gang in the woods after nightfall, Steve demands the return of his belongings, only to be attacked by the knife wielding teens. In the scuffle, Brett's dog Bonnie is mortally knifed, fuelling Brett's lust for revenge. The couple grab their keys and drive off, but the gang attacks with stones and Steve crashes in the dark forest. Steve is trapped and Jenny runs for help.
At daybreak, Jenny sees Steve tied up in barbed wire in a small clearing. Brett forces each reluctant teen to torture Steve. Paige, a female gang member and Brett's psychopathic equivalent, records it on her phone, causing them to realize they have no choice but to kill Steve. The gang spots Jenny and gives chase, allowing Steve time to free himself. Jenny evades the gang and finds Steve, unable to nurse his many deep wounds and finds an engagement ring, leading Steve to propose even as he is in severe pain. After Jenny again heads off for help, she injures her foot on a large spike, her scream attracting the gang. She soon runs into Adam and pleads for his help, but he fears the gang and texts them to hand her over.
The gang tie Jenny, and a now dead Steve, to a pile of wood. Brett forces Adam to set the bonfire while Paige films. Jenny is able to escape and the gang burn Adam to death. Jenny continues to evade the gang, reactively killing gang member Cooper who was actually attempting to help her. When the gang find the body, Brett is thrown into further rage, killing another gang member Harry and causing Paige to run away from him. Jenny reaches a road and is picked up by a driver who is looking for his brother, Ricky, another gang member.
When the driver exits the van to talk with the gang members Ricky his brother and Mark, Jenny panics and steals the van, speeds off, and intentionally runs over and kills Paige while making her way back to town. She makes it to town, crashing into a fence at a large backyard party, which is the starting point since her arrival with Steve. Awaking, she finds herself being comforted by an unknown woman, her husband and the party guests are townpeoples. She realizes she is in Brett's house (after seeing his family pictures on the wall, a second rottweiler named "Clyde" and two dog bowls with the names Bonnie and Clyde written on them) and is lead to the bathroom after saying that she feels sick . Brett's father notices the van on his lawn and one of the parents receives a call informing him of the dead gang members, who are the children of the adults are townpeoples at the house.
A commotion begins in the house and the bathroom door is kicked open as Jenny is confronted by Brett, his father, and party guests. Brett has convinced the parents that the teens and Bonnie have been sadistically murdered by Jenny and Steve. Jenny attacks Brett's father with a razor she found in the bathroom, but is quickly subdued by him. Brett is told to go upstairs and slapped when he tries to say something. Jenny is taken back into the bathroom by Brett's father and two other men. Brett shuts the door of his room, blocking the sound of her screams. The film ends as he deletes the videos of the gang's crimes from Paige's phone, puts on Steve's sunglasses, and stares emotionlessly into the mirror.
Cast[edit]
- Kelly Reilly as Jenny Greengrass
- Michael Fassbender as Steve Taylor
- Jack O'Connell as Brett
- James Gandhi as Adam
- Thomas Turgoose as Cooper
- Bronson Webb as Reece
- Shaun Dooley as Jon
- Finn Atkins as Paige
- Thomas Gill as Ricky
- James Burrows as Harry
- Mega Yoedsoel as Hip Hop
Critical reception[edit]
Eden Lake received mostly positive reviews. According to review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film is rated as "fresh", with a score of 81% based on 26 reviews, summing up opinion as: "A brutal and effective British hoodie-horror that, despite the clichés, stays on the right side of scary."[6]
Dennis Harvey reviewed the film for Variety and said that it was "an effectively harrowing Brit thriller-cum-horror pic," comparing it to Last House on the Left and Lord of the Flies.[7] The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw drew parallels with Deliverance, Straw Dogs and Blue Remembered Hills, and stated that "this looks to me like the best British horror film in years: nasty, scary and tight as a drum," concluding that the film was "exceptionally well made, ruthlessly extreme, relentlessly upsetting."[8]
Other critics, however, have savaged the film, denouncing it as an incitement to class prejudice against working class people in Britain. The Sun condemned the film's "nasty suggestion that all working-class people are thugs"[9] while the Daily Telegraph concluded that "this ugly witless film expresses fear and loathing of ordinary English people".[9] Left wing writer Owen Jones, in his book Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class cites the film at length as an example of media demonisation of proletarian youth via the "Chav" stereotype. He comments, "Here was a film arguing that the middle classes could no longer live alongside the quasi-bestial lower orders."[9]
Eden Lake has been linked with other, roughly contemporaneous, films that deal with concerns over "Broken Britain" and a fear of "hoodies," including Harry Brown, The Disappeared, Summer Scars, Outlaw, The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael, Cherry Tree Lane and Heartless.[10]
See also[edit]
- Cinema of the United Kingdom
- Mathil Mel Poonai , a 2013 Tamil language thriller that bears several similarities to Eden Lake.
- NH10, a Hindi movie loosely draws plot from film adapted to Indian Context.
References[edit]
- ^ "EDEN LAKE (18)". British Board of Film Classification. 5 June 2008. Retrieved 4 May 2013.
- ^ "Eden Lake". British Film Institute. London. Retrieved 12 June 2012.
- ^ "Eden Lake (2008)". Box Office Mojo. 6 November 2008. Retrieved 18 February 2012.
- ^ "Horror Movie News | Exclusive Interview with the Director of 'Eden Lake' | ESplatter.com | The Guide to Horror Movies". ESplatter.com. 13 January 2009. Retrieved 18 February 2012.
- ^ "Interview Eden Lake: Writer-Director James Watkins". Bloody Disgusting. Retrieved 18 February 2012.
- ^ Eden Lake at Rotten Tomatoes
- ^ Harvey, Dennis (3 November 2008). "Variety Reviews – Eden Lake". Variety. Retrieved 21 August 2011.
- ^ Bradshaw, Peter (12 September 2008). "Film Review: Eden Lake". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 August 2011.
- ^ Jump up to: a b c Jones, Owen (2011). Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class. Verso. pp. 130–131. ISBN 1844678644.
- ^ Graham, Jane (5 November 2009). "Hoodies strike fear in British cinema". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 August 2011.
External links[edit]
- 2008 films
- English-language films
- 2008 horror films
- 2000s exploitation films
- 2000s gang films
- 2000s horror thriller films
- 2000s independent films
- 2000s thriller films
- British crime thriller films
- British exploitation films
- British films
- British slasher films
- British horror thriller films
- British independent films
- Directorial debut films
- Films about couples
- Films about murderers
- Films about psychopaths
- Films shot in Buckinghamshire
- Best Horror Empire Award winners
- Survival films
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