Eden Lake

As far as "These kids are killing me" flicks go, I thought it was pretty good. Leading lady was super hot. Even covered in garbage/poop.

I thought about chiming in earlier to say something to the effect of "Kelly Reilly's gorgeousness makes me want to see this." That and Fassbender... for reasons wholly unrelated to his own considerable attractiveness.

In all seriousness, fans of Reilly should check out Mrs. Henderson Presents, if they haven't done so already. It'll make seeing the wang of Hoskins worthwhile.

Taps into a very real (if classist) fear that's identifiable on either side of the pond, and I dug the hell out of it, even if I kind of hated Jenny and Steve for being a couple of dipshit suburbanites that should have packed their crap and left early on. Whatever, it's a cliche, it comes with the territory, I can forgive it, especially since it contains two of the most disturbing death screams I've heard in a horror film in a very long time.

Extraordinarily aggressive horror show, "Night of the Living Chavs", loved it.

It's a nasty piece of work, and for that alone I respect it. One of the reviews I read said that you don't really watch it but you 'endure it', and I think that about sums it up. I'm with you on the death screams as well JackKnife... especially the asian kid (which I presume was one of the two!). *shudder*

However, cliche or not, the characters were bloody stupid. Especially that part where he goes to knock on the door of the house and ends up hiding in the kids bedroom while the dad storms about downstairs. Really, if Chav's show up anywhere I go to visit, I tend to just go somewhere else... it's not like there wouldn't have been somewhere else pretty to go ten minutes down the road!

And that's kind of my problem, it follows the classic 'nice people stuck in the wilderness hunted by cannibals' formula, but I think this kind of thing falls apart in the UK. After all, there are about 3 places in the whole country you can get seriously lost in, and ex-country parks ain't one of them. The fact that the chick couldn't run for 5 minutes randomly in one direction and come across a house/road/Burger King, is a little unrealistic. That's why most British horror films of this type have gone abroad, like Severance and Descent.

Of course, my opinion might be warped by the fact that I live near where this film was shot, and I know you have to be seriously challenged to get lost ten minutes drive outside of London!

I have mixed feelings on Eden Lake. I love a horror movie that acts as a commentary on our times, and usually we get that in allegory, but Eden Lake was very on the nose about it but it still worked. It was taking an underlying fear in British society, the knife crime hysteria that was really picking up steam last year, and using it to punish the viewer. I don't know how it is received elsewhere but viewing it as a British audience member, it felt like someone was dragging a dry razor over an exposed cut, it was hard to lose yourself in the idea of it just being a movie when the news media has been conditioning you to constantly think about kids stabbing you for looking at them funny. As a rational adult I can talk myself out of such panic-mongering by considering the odds of that ever happening, but when watching this movie all rationality just fell away and I was just left feeling sick and nervous.

Of course, it took a while for the film to win me over because I did spend a good portion of the first act just shaking my head at how alarmingly idiotic Fassbender's character was being. You can only excuse so much reckless stupidity with insecure bravado before the movie starts to lose you. Luckily it won me back without me even realizing it.

I have to give special mention to Jack O'Connell who played the gangs ringleader because he was pretty much perfect in that role. It was one of the most effective and scary performances I've seen in some time, as it was entirely believable. I couldn't believe that this was the same kid who played Pukey in This Is England.

But.....

Very solid work. Good time watchin it. INSIDE, the french movie, is far more disturbing though. Women are damn crazy, I'm sorry to say. But men are crazy too so you just cant win.

Just watched this last night and was very impressed. It's a nasty, effective piece of work.

Great to hear these recommendations. I saw some ads for this a while back and was intrigued; consider this added to my Netflix queue!

I really hated it, just fucking hated it. But maybe it plays different to US audiences than it does to UK ones.

It's like a Daily Mail sponsored Horror flick. For those unaware of The Daily Mail they're a pretty popular paper that routinely runs headlines about how immigrants are taking our jobs etc. Real knee jerk stuff.

I guess the climax was really too much for me. It's eschews sense in favour of its 'message' and just feels incredibly cheap.