Horror film antagonists used to be made of tougher stuff. In the seventies and eighties heyday of low budget slasher flicks all it took was one masked lunatic to dispatch a dozen or so amorous teenagers. Nowadays the roles are starting to reverse. Kicking off with the French movie Ils, followed by The Strangers and now Eden Lake, the victims find themselves in an unfortunate minority while the killers hunt in packs.
Camp Crystal Lake
Teacher Jenny (Kelly Reilly) and her boyfriend Steve (Michael Fassbender) head off for a romantic weekend camping out by a secluded lake. Their schmaltzy, light-hearted banter is suitably offset by the foul-mouthed menace eminating from a gang of local hooligans and a dog borrowed from the set of The Omen. So far, so Deliverance. In fact the opening half hour of Eden Lake is an effective exercise in the art of covert dread and pervasive peril. Then it starts to go wrong.
Once open hostilities boil over any attempt at subtlety is swiftly discarded in favour of gratuitous nastiness and explicit violence. The hooded council estate furies gouge, hack and burn with no recourse to mercy or consequence, while the interrupted lovers do their best to fight back in between bouts of bleeding and screaming. What had passed for an engaging script is dispensed with and along with it any semblance of coherent plot.
Writer James Watkins Offers no Redemption
Writer and director James Watkins could learn a lot form the Wes Craven school of visceral exploitation. While Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes were relentless in their portrayal of graphic mutilation they retained a sense of redemption. No matter how great the depths of humiliation were plumbed the viewer could take solace in the fact that sweet revenge would be administered before the end of the final reel. Eden Lake, like Ils and The Strangers before it, is cursed with a sense of rampant hopelessness and bitter frustration.
It’s not all bad though. The film has won much praise for its gritty portrayal of desperate violence devoid of a glossy Hollywood varnish and there is a lot to admire here. Eden Lake is certainly not a passive or sedentary 90 minutes. Whether you switch off half way through in disgust or stick it through until the final credits the film is guaranteed to provoke a reaction. It’s just a shame that no one was able to inject it with a little more substance.
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