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Eden Lake Movie Review

Eden Lake is a 2008 British horror film directed by James Watkins and starring Kelly Reilly and Michael Fassbender. It’s an underrated genre gem.

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“Follow the blood!“

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Refusing to let anything spoil their romantic weekend break, a young couple confront a gang of loutish youths with terrifyingly brutal consequences. I did not know what to expect going into this movie, but what I got was one of the most underappreciated gems of horror cinema, one that deserves much more attention from genre enthusiasts.

What James Watkins did here was create a grounded in reality horror story that concerns a real life fear and is much more disturbing because of it. Some may have issues with the movie’s depiction of the British lower class, but this is not a story about the class divide, but a disturbing tale about the dangers of teenage delinquency, which is a danger that is very much real in these poor communities.

Watkins was chosen to direct a remake of the superb Dutch-Danish feature ‘Speak No Evil’, which was a perfect choice as I found many similarities between the two movies while watching this truly shocking flick. Both feature an unforgiving ending that is bound to horrify every viewer.

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This is what horror cinema ultimately should be about as those films that end happily with the heroes surviving will never be as terrifying as the opposite case. The ending to this movie is so unexpected and absolutely horrifying. It made sense within the context of the story and the setting, so I did buy it, though it made me question at first whether it had to be this unforgiving. Eventually, I’d come to appreciate the movie’s audacity to go there.

It was crazy witnessing Michael Fassbender in such an early role where he was disposed of way too quickly. He is memorable for sure, but I wished to have seen more of him at the end of the day. This is very much the case of an early cheap horror movie kickstarting a big name actor’s career.

Kelly Reilly fared much better. At first I thought that she would be a meek girlfriend type character, but she eventually turned out to be highly competent in her survival, animalistic mode. Reilly was very cool in the role and it was easy to root for this poor woman. I liked everything that they did with her character except for the choice to make her kill a couple of teenagers in that typical accidental death scenario. Those moments were the only clichés in an otherwise far from unoriginal movie.

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The most confident member of this cast turned out to be Jack O’Connell, a capable young actor who channeled his own painful history into the role of the terrifying teenage delinquent who ended up being a true horror villain toward the end. Yes, Eden Lake is quite violent in its second half and at times overly graphic, but that also made it shocking and effective. It is rare for a horror film to make me feel unease, but this one managed to do that and then some. It looks and sounds cheap due to its budgetary constraints, but it was competently acted and directed.