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Eden Lake (2008)

Director:
James Watkins
COUNTRY
UK
GENRE
Horror/Thriller
NORWEGIAN TITLE
Eden Lake
RUNNING TIME
91 minutes
Producer:
Christian Colson
Screenwriter:
James Watkins


Cast includes:

CHARACTER ACTOR/ACTRESS RATING
Jenny Kelly Reilly
Steve Michael Fassbender
Brett Jack O'Connell
Adam James Gandhi
Cooper Thomas Turgoose
Reece Bronson Webb
Paige Finn Atkins

 

Review

The main and overshadowing fault with this gore fest, in which a young couple goes on a trip to the countryside only to be terrorized and mutilated by a gang of youngsters, is that writer/director James Watkins is interested in finding out how far he can go, not how far people can go. As a matter of fact, I see little interest in humans at all. And therefore, Eden Lake is inherently worthless. The only remaining interest is the technical achievements (which are good), and isolated depiction of torture of the human body, for those who are interested in that sort of thing. In a context, which a motion picture arguably is, what goes on here is given no relevance. There is no moral, no metaphorical points of view, no (or minimal) social perspective. The plot's only purpose is to set up increasingly more gruesome sadism for Watkins to film. I have rarely seen a filmmaker with less to say. The existence of Eden Lake must be attributed to a situation in today's film business in which the push for the increasingly extreme is one of the few ways to get attention.

 

Copyright © 30.3.2010 Fredrik Gunerius Fevang

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