First Review: Eden Lake

Released in 2008, Eden Lake is a dark and disturbing movie about two young lovers who are terrorized while camping in the woods by a group of local teenagers. When first introduced, the teens are annoying, but don't seem to pose a large threat to the two lovers. However, as the movie progresses, the teenagers become a much larger threat.
At the beginning of the movie, the tone is almost light-hearted. Had I not known it was a horror movie, I could have thought it would turn into a romantic drama. But then, the teenagers are introduced. After a seemingly irrelevent conflict, the teens become angry with the lovers and decide to torture them and eventually kill them. The plot is fairly simple and could have failed miserably in it's simplicity, but the fact that the "villian" is a group of teenagers adds something very dark to the movie. The idea that teenagers, probably no older than thirteen or fourteen, could inflict such pain on an adult creates a very sick and frightened feeling within the viewer. These teenagers are just children and yet their is something so twisted and sadistic inside of them. It is that sadism that creates the darkness. As the movie progresses, it just continues to get darker and darker. The children become crueler, using barbed-wire to tie one victim and playing a cat-and-mouse game with the other, and the viewer becomes more and more disturbed. Without this disturbing concept, the movie would not have been remotely scary, but it still doesn't make the movie worth the watch. In a horror movie, there is no such thing as "too much gore" or "too much violence", but this movie takes violence to an entirely different level. The movie feels so realistic that the viewer is left thinking "if I went camping this could actually happen to me." With an ending that's darker than everything else in the movie combined, it leaves the viewer feeling dirty and in need of a shower and it is not worth the hour and a half it takes to watch.

-H