Review of Eden Lake (2008) by Ara B — 15 Jul 2011

In Short: Endearing characters, greatly paced building up of the atmosphere, and a realistic avalanche of events, if largely predictable.

A lot of horror movies need to take notes from things like this as they seem to be keenly unaware of the fact that people actually want to watch movies with likable characters rather than one redeemable character and a cast of despicable, annoying red shirts.

You genuinely feel for the characters when things start turning south. Neither of them fall to the creeping Too Dumb To Live disease. They do make mistakes yes, but they aren't driven by idiocy but instead realistic terror.

There's only one or two instances where there's gore for gore's sake but the rest are injuries and circumstances that have consequences for the rest of the movie which is how it should also be.

It's a good movie for horror fans... and maybe disgruntled high school teachers.