Eden Lake

Eden Lake is a 2008 British horror thriller film written and directed by James Watkins in his directorial debut, and starring Kelly Reilly, Michael Fassbender and Jack O'Connell.[5][6] The plot follows a young couple spending their romantic weekend at a remote lake, where they are shortly confronted by a group of hostile youths.

For other uses, see Eden Lake (disambiguation).

Eden Lake
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJames Watkins
Written byJames Watkins
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyChristopher Ross
Edited byJon Harris
Music byDavid Julyan
Production
companies
  • Rollercoaster Films
  • Aramid Entertainment Fund
Distributed byOptimum Releasing
Release dates
  • 15 May 2008 (2008-05-15) (Cannes)
  • 12 September 2008 (2008-09-12) (United Kingdom)
Running time
91 minutes[1]
Countries
  • United Kingdom
  • Cayman Islands[2]
LanguageEnglish
Budget$2 million[3]
Box office$3.9–4.3 million[4][3]

It is among a group of roughly contemporaneous films that deal with concerns over "Broken Britain" and a fear of "hoodies". Some of the close up scenes were filmed at Frensham Small Pond.[7]

Plot

Steve Taylor and his girlfriend Jenny Greengrass set off for a romantic weekend away at a remote lake in the English countryside, where he plans to propose. Steve complains about the behavior of the local children and criticizes the parenting of the adults. In the woods, they meet a young boy named Adam, who is reluctant to speak to them.

The couple's idyllic getaway is disrupted by a gang of rowdy teenagers. The next morning, Steve and Jenny find their food supplies infested with insects. At a local restaurant, Steve describes the teens to the waitress, who defensively insists her kids would never harass anyone. Steve sneaks into a house he believes belongs to the teens. He snoops around but escapes upon the return of Jon, the surly homeowner.

Back at the lake, the couple discovers their car keys, Steve's phone, and wallet missing. Their car is also gone. Returning to town on foot, they avoid a collision with their own car, driven recklessly by the gang's psychopathic leader, Brett. Finding the gang in the woods after nightfall, Steve demands the return of his belongings. The teens pull out knives, and in the scuffle, Brett's dog is stabbed, sending Brett into a maniacal rage. The couple tries to flee, but the gang causes Steve to crash his car. With Steve trapped, Jenny is forced to run for help.

At daybreak, Jenny stumbles upon the group. To her horror, they have tied Steve to a rock with barbed wire. Brett orders each reluctant teen to stab him so they will all be implicated, making it less likely for members to report the incident to police. Paige, the female gang member, records Steve's torture on her phone. Jenny distracts the gang so Steve can free himself but she is unable to nurse his fatal wounds. She finds the engagement ring in his pocket and wears it before hiding him and running for help.

Jenny runs into Adam, who informs the gang of her location. They tie her, along with Steve's dead body, to a pile of wood; Brett forces Adam to light a bonfire while Paige films it. Jenny escapes and Brett necklaces Adam in retaliation. Jenny accidentally kills a younger gang member, Cooper, who was actually attempting to help her. After finding Cooper's body, Brett is thrown into further rage and beats another gang member to death. Paige flees in fear. Jenny steals a van, running over Paige in anger.

She makes it back to town and crashes into a backyard party. She awakes being comforted by a woman and her husband Jon, and realises she is in Brett's house. The other parents are informed of the dead gang members, who are all the children of the adults at the house.

Jenny locks herself in the bathroom for protection but Jon kicks the door in. As she begs them to call police, Brett convinces the adults that Jenny and Steve murdered the gang members. Jon takes Jenny back into the bathroom with two other men. Brett shuts the door of his room, blocking out the sound of Jenny's screams. He deletes the videos of the gang's crimes from Paige's phone, puts on Steve's sunglasses, and stares blankly into a mirror.

Cast

Production

Reception

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, 80% of 30 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 6.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "A brutal and effective British hoodie-horror that, despite the clichés, stays on the right side of scary."[8] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 65 out of 100, based on 7 critics, indicating "generaly favourable reviews ".[9]

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.[10] 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."[11]

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"[12] while The Daily Telegraph concluded that "this ugly witless film expresses fear and loathing of ordinary English people".[12] 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."[12]

Eden Lake has been linked with other 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.[13]

Accolades
Award Date Category Subject Result
Empire Awards
(14th Awards)		 29 March 2009 Best British Film Eden Lake Nominated[14]
Best Horror Eden Lake Won[15]

See also

References
  1. "EDEN LAKE (18)". British Board of Film Classification. 5 June 2008. Retrieved 4 May 2013.
  2. "Eden Lake". London: British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 9 January 2011. Retrieved 12 June 2012.
  3. "Eden Lake (2008)". The Numbers. Retrieved 24 May 2020.
  4. "Eden Lake (2008)". Box Office Mojo. 6 November 2008. Retrieved 18 February 2012.
  5. "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.
  6. "Interview Eden Lake: Writer-Director James Watkins". Bloody Disgusting. 8 April 2010. Retrieved 18 February 2012.
  7. "Not such a green and pleasant land after all..." The Independent. 28 November 2012. Retrieved 16 August 2020.
  8. Eden Lake at Rotten Tomatoes
  9. "Eden Lake". Metacritic.
  10. Harvey, Dennis (3 November 2008). "Variety Reviews – Eden Lake". Variety. Retrieved 21 August 2011.
  11. Bradshaw, Peter (12 September 2008). "Film Review: Eden Lake". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 August 2011.
  12. Jones, Owen (2011). Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class. Verso. pp. 130–131. ISBN 978-1844678648.
  13. Graham, Jane (5 November 2009). "Hoodies strike fear in British cinema". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 August 2011.
  14. "Best Film, RocknRolla". www.empireonline.com. Bauer Consumer Media. 2009. Archived from the original on 6 November 2011. Retrieved 10 July 2023.
  15. "Best Horror, Eden Lake". www.empireonline.com. Bauer Consumer Media. 2009. Archived from the original on 6 November 2011. Retrieved 10 July 2023.
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