Review of Eden Lake (2008) by Frédéric B — 12 Apr 2010

An interesting take on survival horror. Instead of brain eating zombies or monsters, our protagonists are confronted with a bunch of antisocial chavs on the loose. While I enjoyed watching a British Horror Thriller, I found many scenes of the movie way over the top in a misanthropic and perverted way. Scenes of torture are unnecessary in every movie and the reason why I stay away from porngore such as Saw and the like.

Some people claim the movie is a social commentary. We have a bunch of kids going brutally apeshit and we know they're parents have violent tendencies. Is that a social commentary ? Maybe if your level of dialectic intellect ends with the Smurfs, there is no sort of social commentary whatsover in this movie, just an excuse to make another gory shocker.

The film starts out as cheesy as the lot, but becomes more interesting as the lead characters are challenged with a band of noisy youth. The movie takes it from there and the quarrel escalates into violence. The level of escalation is nicely drawn and quite believable.

All in all, the movie would have been much better without the unnecessary violence. The director should have focussed on the group dynamics instead of the action scenes and this film would have been way more interesting and relevant.

For an independent movie, it is quite the respectable effort though. Once the director has grown up, he might even make a movie for adults.

HX.