X
- 2008
- R
- The Weinstein Company
- 1 h 31 m
- 2008
- R
- The Weinstein Company
- 1 h 31 m
Summary Primary school teacher Jenny and her boyfriend Steve head out of London for a weekend at a beautiful secluded lake. However, when the couple encounter rowdy and volatile group of teenagers, the romantic trip takes a sinister and deadly turn... (Optimum Releasing)
Directed By: James Watkins
Written By: James Watkins
- 2008
- R
- The Weinstein Company
- 1 h 31 m
- 2008
- R
- The Weinstein Company
- 1 h 31 m
Eden Lake
65
6.4
Where to Watch
Summary Primary school teacher Jenny and her boyfriend Steve head out of London for a weekend at a beautiful secluded lake. However, when the couple encounter rowdy and volatile group of teenagers, the romantic trip takes a sinister and deadly turn... (Optimum Releasing)
Directed By: James Watkins
Written By: James Watkins
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 7 Critic Reviews
65
71% Positive
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
14% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
14% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 7 Critic Reviews
65
71% Positive
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
14% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
14% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
You don't watch it, you survive it. A battering experience, and the hardest Brit horror in years.
The shattering downbeat ending is well earned and genuinely shocking.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 79 User Ratings
6.4
58% Positive
46 Ratings
46 Ratings
24% Mixed
19 Ratings
19 Ratings
18% Negative
14 Ratings
14 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 79 User Ratings
6.4
58% Positive
46 Ratings
46 Ratings
24% Mixed
19 Ratings
19 Ratings
18% Negative
14 Ratings
14 Ratings
Eden Lake, watched for the second time and still looks great.
Most men and I suspect a lot of women will find the actions of the main characters frustrating.
Why go into a restricted area in the first place, why park your car a long way from where you want to be and why stick around unless you intend to really make a stand for yourself.
Later in the film both main characters again seem to lose useful weapons such as a heavy stick and a large spanner, plus why go to such a remote area and put yourself and your best girl in a possible compromising situation?
Great film, very violent, excellently played by all the cast and I am sure a lot of peoples worst nightmare.
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If you can suspend your disbelief - that this film's cast of villains is exaggerated and borderline comical - then this film will leave you shaken to the core with its succulent doses of tensity.
The film follows Michael Fassbender and Kelly Reilly acting it out as a couple looking to spend time together in a secluded lake. They arrive there, seeking to relax, and for Fassbender's character, it is the perfect time for him to push their relationship further with a special plan. As with other horror films of this nature, the couple's romantic trip derails quickly into violence as their collision with a group of teenagers (led by Brett, played by Jack O'Connell) fuels a fight for survival.
Eden Lake operates on the same fundamental level as its contemporaries, fulfilling its role as dirty violence. The film is tense, gory, and conclusively upsetting, but that's what makes it work so well. Forget about moral complications and deeper thematic constructs. Maybe there's something interesting here with the way it tackles the moral decay of the working class and its unchecked youth. It's clear, however, that the film is less concerned with its ideas and is more geared towards serving a fine slasher horror. And that's where its strength lies.
It's fun to have a film that can be both delicious in its bloody imagery and utterly dreadful in its bleak story. Kelly Reilly gives out a performance that allows much of the film's straightforward plot to remain engaging, as her role as the girlfriend leaves a memorable portrayal of one's thirst for survival. It's Reilly's performance that evokes an appeal that compliments O'Connell's unrelenting brutality. At the end of the day, the film is strictly linear in regards to following a conventional formula. But sometimes, it's all you need for this type of work. Besides, it is tightly executed and provides an explosive ending.
If anything, Eden Lake packs a delicious **** punch to the stomachs of its audience. And that - is good enough.
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As a thriller, Eden Lake absolutely works, but feel-good entertainment it isn’t. Don’t bring a date.
Seriously bloody horrible in every particular, and uncompromisingly bleak to the very end, this looks to me like the best British horror film in years: nasty, scary and tight as a drum.
Eden Lake doesn't feel like torture porn so much as a rural-jeopardy thriller in extremis.
This slice of class-baiting British ordeal horror from writer-director James Watkins is potently made. It's also exploitative trash, serving up silly levels of alarmist editorialising about kids today.
Eden Lake has the trappings of a low-IQ thriller but it's really a contemptible tract feeding the prejudices of the U.K.'s rightwing tabloids that claim the country is overrun by teenagers wielding knives.
This is of a theme with the 00's European horror films. A fear of youths. Hoodie horror I've heard it called. Its roots are steeped in "The Last House on the Left" and "I Spit on Your Grave". Men get it here too. Growing up and becoming square is the ultimate evil.
This movie and its ilk are clearly made by men who have grown up and haven't quite come to grips with how old they are yet. They feel young inside but are afraid of the actual young because they don't recognize them or their interests - they have nothing in common anymore. It's all the same from generation to generation but this generation just so happens to be the first truly weened on pop culture - specifically movies and TV telling them how important and special their childhoods were (see the 80's nostalgia parade that just won't end).
There's a lot of good tension here but it's all in service of pure torture (also an 00's theme). Eden Lake is hurtful and mean and unrelenting in its nihilism. This is both good and bad. If it had more to say it might be good, but it's really a genre exercise about a final woman outsmarting these terrible kids (their inexplicable brutality just suddenly happens with little build-up or explanation - it lacks the surreal unknown of "Them (Ils)"). It all works but to what end? At a certain point you just start rolling your eyes when the main character does something like bury herself in a pile of poopy sludge.
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I gace this film a 5 and not a zero because of the fine work of the actors, editors, cameramen and other technicians.
In fact, even the directing is good for its purpose. This kind of film puts me on the fence because the acting, directing, and editing are all very good in a lot of these kinds of films. You believe its happening while you watch and you suspect this kind of thing could possibly happen... at least while the film's tension is making you grit your teeth. On the other hand, the whole point of the film and what it suggests is what ruins it. This is torture porn or what I call "The cruelty genre" where humans have absolutely no regard for another human and behave in ways that are very unrealistic in the scope of real life situations. The films character's become so focused on their cruel needs that nothing in the real world intercedes like hunger, boredom, fatigue, distractions, changes in loyalty the fact that someone might sneeze. once the cruel characters start their mission they become demons that never faulter in their quest to inflict harm on the protagonists and this is just stupid. We have seen films make a fine point with extreme violence and the social monsters we create in neglected environments (clockwork orange). How many more of these films do we need to see where the only point is pure manipulation of the audience. The only point is tension itself. There is an old commercial made in the states for Dupont by the agency Young & Rubicam where a voice over tells you how a material made by Dupont is incredibly temperature neutral. They show a metal box made of this material. they show a bunson burner boiling water. they put a baby chick in the box and place the box holding the live chick in the boiling water and the voice over speaks very languidly about the product. the tension is enormous as you feel you are watching this poor little chick die. then they take the box out and the chick is perfectly fine. They sold me. amazing. what is this film selling me? fear and hatred toward the neglected class? please. How many more filmmakers are going to try and say the same thing using human cruelty as their medium. if you need to see this message expressed watch "Funny Games" it has a point and it makes you squirm. IT is probably the last film that should ever be made about callous and mindless cruelty.
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Couple decide to have a romantic weekend in an old quarry (Eden Lake) before it gets turned into a modern housing estate.
The usual ridiculous stupidity that leads to mayhem & grisly demise.
Highly unoriginal although Jack O'Connell is very good as the leader of the scallywags. However, the very talented Thomas Turgoose is underused.
In summary, it's sort of a Daily Mail "What kids are like today" film.
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Awards
London Critics Circle Film Awards
• 2 Wins & 3 Nominations
Fright Meter Awards
• 2 Wins & 3 Nominations
Fantasporto
• 2 Wins & 2 Nominations
