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Eden Lake

Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 10:07 am
by jonbly
jonbly liked this one. The first beach scene was nicely awkward, and the lead youth (in fact, the whole gang) was very well played. The ending was nicely set up, too.

Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 9:21 pm
by DavieT
A good well made opening movie with very good performances from the leads particularly the lead kid Jack O'Connell who played one very believably evil little sicko b*****d. Should we be scared of such kids? Actually I was more revulsed by the parents.

Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2008 8:06 am
by MaxRenn
I hated this movie. It's well made and very well acted, but I had a fundamental problem with its message which I thought was reactionary middle-class toss. I'm sure the Daily Mail will hate it, like they hate every genre film, but really it's one of their editorials come to bloody life.

Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2008 10:14 am
by AdeBrown
I thought this was a good start to the weekend, nice to see a british film with such excellent visual and actorly qualities. But then I also agree with MaxRenn about the class message.

The scene of the Nice Couple looking at the Horrible Families when they stop for food :roll my eyes:

As I said on the way out "Working class East Midlanders are scum ! I am never going to the Midlands again !"

Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2008 11:32 am
by Grindhouse
AdeBrown wrote:I thought this was a good start to the weekend, nice to see a british film with such excellent visual and actorly qualities. But then I also agree with MaxRenn about the class message.

The scene of the Nice Couple looking at the Horrible Families when they stop for food :roll my eyes:

As I said on the way out "Working class East Midlanders are scum ! I am never going to the Midlands again !"

Hmm a bit harsh there and with that comment,does that mean eastmidlanders are different to any other working class folks,no!
but still you dont have to go there,you can just deal with the innercity folks. :)

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 5:05 am
by rawshark
Liked it, has a chance of a mainstream breakout, but was a bit dumb in it's treatment of class structures...

Kelly Reilly was both great and gorgeous...

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 7:48 am
by Fenriz
Yeah it was pretty good I thought, it was a bit of a depressing start to the weekend considering last year started with Black Sheep, but I still enjoyed it. The bit where the kid puts the stanley knife in the guys mouth was the first moment of the fest to make me go urgh, nasty stuff. Nice to see it didn't go for a happy ending either and stayed brutal all the way through. Not one of the best of the weekend, but liked it all the same.

7/10

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 11:01 am
by rambozo
Thought (as did a few it seems) that the social commentary was a bit off!

Even with the 'twist' it wasn't anything we hadn't seen before - but this was well-executed (pardon the pun).

A good, but 'down' start to a great weekend.

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 2:06 pm
by Jekyll
Did like this but it still had a few problems.

But far and away the best thing on the first day.

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 2:27 pm
by odishon
Liked this one. Looked great and had sufficient amount of suspense and gore to keep you hooked.

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 4:25 pm
by narcan
Eden Lake made me feel really uneasy and a bit sick. Especially the super-nasty ending which essentially subverted the climax of Last House On The Left. Best movie on Thursday by a mile for me.

I'd like to see the yob with the knob from Eden Lake & the meat humping dad from Mum & Dad go head to head in a Freddy Vs Jason icons of horror, swearing for England, style grudge match.

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 4:53 pm
by streetrw
It's true that it's not much we haven't seen before - a lot of running around in the woods from armed and merciless maniacs before turning the tables on them - but efficiently done and crunchily nasty in places. I didn't like the ending: I suppose it's the only way it can logically end but it's a kick to the audience who've invested emotionally in the fate of the characters and who want to see chavvy peasant scum get their due. (See Adam Mason's intolerable Broken from a few years ago for the same spit in the viewer's eye.) But it IS well made, there's no question about that.

I think it just got lucky in the sense that it's coincided with a rash of headlines about Britain's Youth Out Of Control. I'm not convinced that cinema is the best place for social issues because of the huge lag time between writing the first draft and getting the finished product to an audience - in this case I think he said it was three years. For all they could have known, the Government might have managed to eradicate youth crime while they were making it....

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 5:18 pm
by kimblebee
Liked this one, only thing that put me off was the male leads actions in the first place - maybe a bit more tenacious in his pursuit of moral justice than you'd normally expect..which we all knew would antagonize and lead to trouble. The kids were despicable, and the realism of the whole situation was what made it particularly scary, in my opinion..

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 10:29 pm
by EvilAsh
I really liked this one but it worrys me, because you know there are kids out there who would love to get away with that. Sad but true

Eden Lake

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 11:27 pm
by Stephen with ph
One of the highlights of the festival, genuinely scary and with a little more substance than you'd expect from this subgenre...

but I am middle-class...