5 gibbles out of 5

Director: James Watkins

Believe the hype.

There are movies that are exhausting.  ‘Irreversible’ comes to mind.  But that movie was a purposeful onslaught – using every aspect of the film, Gaspar Noe attempts to make you as uncomfortable as possible.  Eden Lake is exhausting, but arrives at it much differently.  It’s not a concept brought to revolting life, but rather a tale of a night gone horribly wrong.  The success of James Watkins direction and script is to prevent the movie from seeming like it exists just to terrorize you.  It’s rarely exploitative in its violence, and the affair proceeds as though the film wants to be about a leisurely vacation but cannot avoid getting entangled in the horrible sequence of events it presents.

The actual setup of the film is typical enough for the genre: a couple vacations at Eden Lake, an out-of-the-way hopefully mostly isolated lake that’s soon being taken over for housing development.  When some unruly teens hang out at the same lake, our couple (Michael Fassbender and Kelly Reilly) run afoul of the lead teen’s (Jack O’Connell) temper, events escalating to a night of terror, torture and violence.

Torture porn?  Eden Lake popped into the horror world around the time that niche was, thankfully, playing itself out, and  at first glance it shares some elements – unflinching torture, a lack of hope.  But if you can uncover your eyes, the film is up to so much more.  While bloody, the violence is rarely exploitative.  Moments that, in other films, might be played up for gore are here more played up for discomfort as Brett, the main teenager, threatens and forces his pack of followers to participate in the horrors.  Consequences are shown and felt by the viewer, the ‘Funny Games’ concept of “you’re participating by watching this” popping up for a chilling last shot of the film.

It helps also that Watkins dispenses with any unnecessary flash.  The forest around the lake is either lush or condemning or dirty when it needs to be, and the shots are steady or messy as matching the tone.  It’s a straight-forward approach with patient flourishes in the right places that make it feel like a whole experience instead of something where you wait for the kills.

And what an experience.

A coming of age film

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