Review of Eden Lake (2008) by James K — 13 Jun 2010

The plot of Eden Lake took me as interesting and eccentric, as it shows a loved couple on a romantic weekend break, being hunted down by a gang of young yobs and murder is delivered from both sides. No other horror has ever shown the enemy to be a gang of teenagers and children, promoting a valuable message to the audience of what 'kids' are capable in this modern British era, which is re enforced as one of the closing lines is 'they are only kids'.

For me, I felt the film consisted of, and basically relied on, the typical horror genre codes and conventions the audience has grown to expect, making certain elements become predictable, and therefore boring. The car suddenly breaking down or crashing, and the highly dense mistakes the victim plunges into generally becomes expected and unappreciated by the audience.

However, the first few images on screen revealing the main character being what appears to be tortured, misleads the audience into predicting this characters fate, releasing a number of enigma into the causes of such event. The feature ends with the character being dragged into a bathroom and we presume she gets murdered, however, whom she is murdered by and the events leading up to it are more so surprising and unexpected judging by the way the plot is played out up until the last 20 minutes or so.

I felt as the film ended to a close it became a tad more surprising, but yet still unrealistic and far to coincidental to fit into a believable plot. Nevertheless, horror films can only hold a certain amount of realistic turns in the storyline before the material becomes boring and loses the audiences interest. Eden lake offered a brand new and interesting turn of events as it closed on an unbelievable state of affairs.

All the way through, Jack O'Connell delivered a stunning and flawless performance, making him believable towards the audience. He thoroughly maintained his reputation of an iconic actor who usually plays 'the bad boy', and gave a striking performance, truly making his character all it was hyped up to be.