Eden Lake (Manitoba)

''Eden Lake'' is a 2008 British-French horror thriller film written and directed by James Watkins and starring Kelly Reilly, Michael Fassbender and Jack O'Connell.

The film was nominated for the Empire Award for Best British Film. It is among a group of roughly contemporaneous films that deal with concerns over "Broken Britain" and a fear of " hoodies". Some of the close up scenes were filmed at Frensham Small Pond.

Plot

Steve Taylor picks up his girlfriend Jenny Greengrass, a nursery school teacher, and they set off to a romantic weekend away at a remote lake in the wooded English countryside, where he plans to propose. While saying at a bed and breakfast for the night, Steve complains about the behavior of the local children and criticizes the parenting of the adults. Upon arriving at the lake, which is explained to be disused and flooded quarry, they find that the area has been closed off for redevelopment into a gated community, but they decide to sneak in anyway. In the woods near the lake, they meet a young boy named Adam, who is reluctant to speak to them.

As Steve and Jenny attempt to wind down, the peaceful setting is disrupted by a gang of rowdy teenagers who have ridden their bicycles to a spot within a few metres of the young couple. Steve asks them to keep the noise down, but is met with abuse. The next morning, Steve and Jenny find their food supplies infested with insects, so they decide to ride into town for breakfast. Steve is forced to fix the car after a tire was damaged by a bottle left behind by the teens. While driving, Steve spots the teens and follows them, but they evade him. The couple eats breakfast in a local restaurant, and Steve describes the teens to the waitress and asks if she's seen them, and while she responds jokingly at first, she then becomes very defensive and insists her kids would never harass anyone. Later, Steve notices a house with bikes outside that he thinks belongs to the teens. When no one answers the door, he enters the house and proceeds to snoop around. But on the return of Jon, the surly homeowner, Steve is obliged to make his escape from an upstairs window.

Back at the lake, after Steve scuba dives and after Jenny wakes up from a nap, they discover the bag containing their car keys and Steve's phone and wallet has gone missing. They return to where they parked their car to discover it is also gone. Returning to town on foot, they avoid a collision with their own car, driven recklessly through the woods by the gang's psychopathic leader, Brett.

Finding the gang in the woods after nightfall, Steve demands the return of his belongings, and a melee starts. The teens pull out knives, and in the scuffle, Brett's dog Bonnie is mortally stabbed, sending Brett into a maniacal rage. Brett angrily gives the couple the keys to their car and tells them to leave; the couple grabs the keys and tries to flee, but the gang soon follows them, causing Steve to crash his car. With Steve trapped, Jenny is forced to run for help.

At daybreak, Jenny stumbles upon the group who have tied Steve to a rock with barbed wire. Brett orders each reluctant teen to stab him so they will all be implicated, thus making it less likely for a dissident member to report the incident to police. When Paige, the female gang member, records Steve's torture on her phone, they realise they have no choice but to kill him. Jenny uses her phone's Bluetooth to connect to Steve's phone and make it ring to distract the gang. The gang realises that Jenny must be nearby and gives chase while Steve buys time to free himself. Jenny evades the gang and finds Steve, but is unable to nurse his fatal wounds. She finds an engagement ring in his pocket, and Steve tells her he planned to propose. Jenny puts on the ring and hides Steve under some leaves. She then runs off to find help but accidentally steps on a large spike and her screams of pain get the gang's attention.

Jenny runs into Adam and begs for help, but he ends up informing the gang of their location. They tie Jenny, along with Steve's dead body, to a pile of wood; Brett forces Adam to light a bonfire while Paige films it. The fire burns through the ropes restraining her and Jenny is able to escape, so Brett necklaces Adam in retaliation. Jenny continues to evade the gang, accidentally killing a younger gang member, Cooper, who was seemingly attempting to help her. After finding Cooper's body, Brett is thrown into further rage and beats Harry, another gang member, to death. Paige runs away in fear. Jenny reaches a road and is picked up by a driver who is looking for his brother Ricky, another gang member. When he exits the van to talk with Ricky, Jenny steals the van and drives off, afraid of being caught again, and runs over Paige in the process.

As Jenny makes it back to town, she crashes into a fence at a large backyard party and collapses. She awakes to find herself being comforted by a woman and her husband Jon, and soon realises she is in Brett's house. Jon notices Reece's van on his lawn as one of the other parents receives a call informing her of the dead gang members, who are the children of the adults at the house.

A commotion begins as Jenny locks herself in the bathroom. Jon kicks the door in and Jenny is confronted by all of the party guests, as well as Brett who has returned home. Brett has convinced the adults that Jenny and Steve sadistically murdered the gang members. Jenny begs Jon to call the police and then tries ineffectually to attack him with a razor she found in the bathroom, but Jon quickly subdues her. Jon tells Brett to go upstairs, then takes Jenny back into the bathroom with two other men. Brett shuts the door of his room, blocking out her screams. He deletes the videos of the gang's crimes from Paige's phone, puts on Steve's sunglasses, and stares blankly into a mirror.

Cast

Production

Critical reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, 80% of 28 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 6.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "A brutal and effective British hoodie-horror that, despite the clichés, stays on the right side of scary."

Dennis Harvey reviewed the film for '' Variety'' and said that it was "an effectively harrowing Brit thriller-cum-horror pic," comparing it to ''Last House on the Left'' and '' Lord of the Flies''. ''The Guardian''s Peter Bradshaw drew parallels with ''Deliverance'', '' Straw Dogs'' and ''Blue Remembered Hills'', and stated that "this looks to me like the best British horror film in years: nasty, scary and tight as a drum," concluding that the film was "exceptionally well made, ruthlessly extreme, relentlessly upsetting."

Other critics, however, have savaged the film, denouncing it as an incitement to class prejudice against working class people in Britain. '' The Sun'' condemned the film's "nasty suggestion that all working-class people are thugs" while ''The Daily Telegraph'' concluded that "this ugly witless film expresses fear and loathing of ordinary English people". Owen Jones, in his book '' Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class'' cites the film at length as an example of media demonisation of proletarian youth via the "Chav" stereotype. He comments, "Here was a film arguing that the middle classes could no longer live alongside the quasi-bestial lower orders."

''Eden Lake'' has been linked with other films that deal with concerns over "Broken Britain" and a fear of " hoodies," including '' Harry Brown'', '' The Disappeared'', ''Summer Scars'', ''Outlaw'', ''The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael'', ''Cherry Tree Lane'' and '' Heartless''.

See also

* Cinema of the United Kingdom
* ''Mathil Mel Poonai'', a 2013 Tamil language thriller that bears several similarities to Eden Lake.
* '' NH10'', a Hindi movie loosely draws its plot from the film adapted to an Indian context.

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Eden Lake
2000s exploitation films
2000s gang films
2000s horror thriller films
2008 directorial debut films
2008 films
2008 horror films
2008 independent films
2000s crime thriller films
British crime thriller films
British exploitation films
British horror thriller films
British independent films
British slasher films
British survival films
Films about couples
Films about murderers
Pathé films
Films scored by David Julyan
Films shot in Buckinghamshire
2000s English-language films
Films directed by James Watkins
2000s British films
2000s French films
British horror films
French crime thriller films
French exploitation films
French horror thriller films
French independent films
French slasher films
French survival films
English-language French films