Review of Eden Lake (2008) by Greg A — 09 Dec 2011

Holy shit! This movie is so scary and tension inducing with such little respite. Try to imagine the holiday weekend from hell, imagine every single possible thing that could go wrong does when a pack of nasty little hoods are praying upon our newly weds Steve & Jenny in this really nice camping ground surrounding Eden Lake. The hoods steal a few things, Fassbender gets angry and then everything goes straight to hell as this really nasty leader of the hoods played by Jack O'Connell whose performance makes me think what would it be like to mix Al Capone with The Joker and put him into an adolescent and what you get is a monster seeking chaos and control through the fear that he puts into his gang. He beats them all, torments them and belittles them into doing what he says and that is to hunt this couple down and kill them. Like any good fascist leader if you don't do what he says, he will kill you.

Now while it is true I came to watching this movie for Michael Fassbender (sexi man) & Thomas Turgoose from This is England, I fell in love with Kelly Reilly's performance which started off as the quiet lover of Fassbender but then evolves into a sort of John Rambo from First Blood but much more realistic and down to earth (not to say that Eden Lake is a down to earth kind of place, if it is anything like this movie the entire place should be bombed and wiped off from the earth).

This movie is simply fucking scary, the pacing is amazingly tension inducing and amidst the chaos, it's not reasonless, I never find myself saying "why is this happening?" These are the real Little Monsters and they've got an anti-christ for a leader.