Eden Lake poster & wallpaper

Bronson Webb, Finn Atkins, Jack O'Connell

"Eden Lake" is about a couple on a weekend away who are terrorized by a gang of feral kids.

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64% liked it

28,862 ratings

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83% liked it

23 critics

R, 1 hr. 31 min.

Directed by: James Watkins

Release Date: October 31, 2008

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DVD Release Date: January 6, 2009

Stats: 1,560 reviews

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Kelly Reilly as Jenny in Eden Lake (2008) Kelly Reilly as Jenny in Eden Lake (2008) Eden Lake (2008) Jack O'Connell as Brett in Eden Lake (2008) Eden Lake (2008) Jack O'Connell as Brett in Eden Lake (2008) Jack O'Connell as Brett in Eden Lake (2008) Jack O'Connell as Brett in Eden Lake (2008) Kelly Reilly as Jenny in Eden Lake (2008) Jack O'Connell as Brett in Eden Lake (2008) Kelly Reilly as Jenny & Michael Fassbender as Steve in Eden Lake (2008) ??? in Eden Lake (2008) Jack O'Connell as Brett in Eden Lake (2008) Kelly Reilly as Jenny & Michael Fassbender as Steve in Eden Lake (2008) Kelly Reilly as Jenny in Eden Lake (2008) Thomas Turgoose as Cooper in Eden Lake (2008) Kelly Reilly as Jenny in Eden Lake (2008) Kelly Reilly as Jenny & Michael Fassbender as Steve in Eden Lake (2008)
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Flixster Reviews (1,560)

  • rubystevens
    October 19, 2009
    rubystevens
    sadistic punks can ruin your yuppie weekend. decent british horror with social commentary. obviously inspired by them (ills) but the bleak ending earned an extra half star from me
  • rebvodka042099
    September 26, 2009
    rebvodka042099
    Mildly interesting horror film that doesn't offer any chance for redemption. Corrupted and remorseless down to the bone kids that decide to have fun with a poor couple who wanted to take a quiet weekend off by the lake. Great for a scary night on the couch with chips, but nothing...( read more) more beyond that. The setting is one we've seen before, with the only thing making different - the ending. There are stomach-twisting and cliff-hanging moments, and it creates the right mood and atmosphere, but it's nothing original and nothing I would choose seeing twice.
  • EarthlyAlien
    June 18, 2009
    EarthlyAlien
    "Eden Lake, my arse! Slapton Quarry!"

    Get some kids together, and you have a class - but in James Watkins' directorial debut, the hoodie horror Eden Lake, a gang of kids exposes the faultlines where British class becomes split. In a scene in the middle of the film,...( read more) a character is burnt alive with a tyre 'necklace', evoking the familiar imagery of a racially and socially divided South Africa - but in fact the signifiers of social apartheid are already enshrined within the titular lake, said once to have been a working stone quarry, then flooded and turned into a public park, and now being transformed into an exclusive gated community for the rich. The perfect arena, then, for the brutal conflict that follows, where it's not just adults pitted against children, but bourgeois liberals against recalcitrant proles. It's not so very far from where we all live today.

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    Steve (Michael Fassbender) picks up his girlfriend Jenny (Kelly Reilly) from the primary school where she teaches in a leafy London suburb, and the pair sets off for a camping weekend at Eden Lake, where Steve hopes to propose to her. Things get off to an imperfect start - the locals in the nearby town are hardly friendly, and a sleepless night is spent in a noisy pub motel - but once they get to the idyllic quarry, all that can be forgotten.

    Except that the lovers are not alone. A group of kids is drinking rowdily nearby, and when Steve asks them to turn their music down, things quickly get out of hand, as the teenagers' menacing pranks escalate into violence. With Steve severely injured, Jenny must call on all her inner reserves of strength to get out of the woods alive.

    The children who populate the horror/thriller genres are often of the 'demon seed' variety - think the socoiopathic aliens of Village of the Damned, Damien the satanic spawn in The Omen, the murderous mobs of Would You Kill a Child?, the sickle-wielding hick-lets of Children of the Corn, or even the candy-loving tearaways of Hostel. What is new in Eden Lake is the way that Watkins takes what is essentially the plot of Deliverance, wherein urban outsiders must turn feral to survive the rustic locals, and uses it to tap right into contemporary anxieties about teens run amok. Here the locals are not drooling rednecks, but English kids having a laugh and playing out their adolescent power games beyond the reach of adult supervision - and their bullying, knife-wielding, binge-drinking, happy-slapping, joy-riding hooliganism could have been conjured from the pages of any tabloid today.

    Still, Eden Lake is a little more subtle than that. The kids are drawn and individuated with a considerable degree of psychological plausibility, and Watkins shows genuine sensitivity to the workings of peer pressure on those who might otherwise be less willing to exhibit such behavioural extremes. Conversely, Jenny's tendency, when cornered, to lash out indiscriminately dramatises the dangers involved in the sort of kneejerk response that tabloids are so wont to provoke.

    In any case, Watkins is not just blaming the kids, but their parents too, in what might be perceived as a frontal assault on the working classes in general. The perspective here (arguably cinema's default perspective) is strictly bourgeois, as we follow Jenny and Steve through a middle-class nightmare of full-body contact with the unwashed masses, terrified they will vandalise and beat and rob and maim and even kill, just to relieve the boredom of their oppressive existences. That it is actually frightening is down to the performances of Reilly (who I've always found a uniquely gifted, amazingly expressive actress, as opposed to the pretty English rose most people dismiss her as) as Jenny and Jack O'Connell (a talented young actor from Derby who's currently on E4's series "Skins" and who had a small part in Shane Meadows' This Is England) as the kids' psychotic ringleader, the taut direction, Watkins' unflinchingly downbeat script - and that current mood of fear in the air that the film so perfectly captures.

    Whether Eden Lake is at all edifying on the issues that it raises is open to debate. After all, its message is perhaps best summarised by the words of Steve's talking SatNav (with comedy Kylie Minogue voice), announced when the couple first drive into the precinct of Eden Lake: "At your first opportunity, turn around." It is the counsel of non-intervention, of quietism, of looking the other way - and the rest of the film illustrates what happens when such advice is not followed. Yet it is also, of course, the sort of counsel that is arguably part of the problem, in that the problem will not somehow vanish if it is simply ignored. On the contrary, the very worst way to bridge a division is to polarise its sides even further - and yet that is exactly what this films seems to be doing.

    Perhaps, though, this is missing the point. Eden Lake is not trying to be a piece of social realist commentary, but is instead exploiting certain tensions within the nation to create edge-of-your-seat thrills. No matter what views it seems to be promoting, if it gets people talking about youth violence, class conflict and the gulf of social inequality in Britain, then all the better - and if it does not, at least it will give them a frightening, albeit derivative, ride.
  • Deano78
    April 26, 2009
    Deano78
    An original film described by some as "hoodie horror" as a young middle class couple become terrorised by a pack of feral youths on a camping weekend. What is scary is that some of the behaviour of the teens in this isn't too far away from what is really happening in society toda...( read more)y. A simple confrontation escalates into ever growing violence until it becomes a case of just trying to survive and escape to safety. There is some social commentary raised in the film about why the kids are this way and parents taking responsibility, but this isn't in your face it's very subtle. Overall it makes for an interesting different kind of horror film.
  • TheMachinist
    April 7, 2009
    TheMachinist
    "Eden Lake" has nothing to do with anything supernatural. Nothing out of this world. The real horror hear is made by something that actually exists... Fucked up children. Is there anything scarier out there?

    Forget about Damien or Malachai. Meet a bunch of kids from the UK, main...( read more)ly the one called Brett (Jack O'Connell). I can't recall when was the last time I saw a more revolting character then him. If you want to make decent horror, genuine characters like Brett will help a lot when aiming for something special.

    "Eden Lake" starts out slowly, focusing more on the relationship between the two leads, Jenny (Kelly Reilly) and Steve (Michael Fassbender). But early on of the film, the kids take place in the picture. They're introduced as normal punks who think that they can do and act as they please. A sad event will lead to a disaster between the two parties...

    When the 'action' begins in "Eden Lake", it is more brutal and realistic then I've seen in years. Some scenes may cause serious nausea. The factor that really boosts up the effect here is that it looks and feels so real. I actually believe that something like this could happen in our mad world.

    The actors in "Eden Lake" do a fantastic job. The two leads have made other (bigger) productions before but the kids here surprised me, big time. Terrific job by all.

    The camerawork is very good and the sounds also work fine. There aren't any surprising shock sound effects here, which is a good thing. That belongs to cheap Hollywood horror.

    "Eden Lake" keeps you on the edge of your seat. Some scenes will definitely shock you and there are scenes that include gore but it's not over the top, as in many other horror movies. For me, "Eden Lake" was the best horror/thriller I've seen for a while. Definitely worth a look, if you're into more realistic horror.
  • pedrorock
    November 22, 2009
    pedrorock
    very violent movie!!
  • quichefolle
    November 19, 2009
    quichefolle
    Un survival forestier ma foi bien sympatoche!
  • LelandPalmer
    November 18, 2009
    LelandPalmer
    EDEN LAKE IS A VERY TOUGH HORROR MOVIE AND A GOOD ONE. IT DESERVE 3 STARS.
    BUT I WILL ADD ONE MORE , BECAUSE OF JACK O'CONNELL WHO IS AN UNBELIEVABLE TALENTED YOUNG ACTOR TO FOLLOW.
  • mannly
    November 13, 2009
    mannly
    This movie is sick and unrelenting. As a viewer you don't really get any satisfaction in a way because the innocent get slaughtered while the sicko gets spared, and is completely unapologetic. That said, it is very well done, and maybe what is the most disturbing thing is how it ...( read more)really could happen. With the British youth yob culture we have, which is getting worse... Who is to say it couldn't? Scary.
  • seanattle74
    November 12, 2009
    seanattle74
    Scary concept. Very disturbing. This is not for the kids.

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Critic Reviews

September 12, 2008
Nigel Andrews, The Financial Times

Eden Lake: pursuit, persecution, violent death. full review

View more Eden Lake reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

Comments

  • MurderCapital
    March 17, 2009
    MurderCapital
    Watch "Last House On The Left" (Original) and "I Spit On Your Grave" instead...
  • Muktidaya
    February 24, 2009
    Muktidaya
    ok.. i like it
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