The UK thriller Eden Lake enjoys the fortune of having cast two leads just prior to their big breakouts: Kelly Reilly (Mrs. Watson of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes franchise) and Michael Fassbender (Inglourious Basterds). She’s Jenny, a preschool teacher with a radiant smile and bad hairdo; he’s Steve, her slick boyfriend taking her away for a romantic weekend of camping, during which he intends to pop The Question.
He takes her to the picturesque Eden Lake, a beautiful beach surrounded by miles of forest, soon to be leveled to make way for executive homes. While sunning in their swimwear, they encounter the worst kind of hoodlums: asshole teenagers. There’s six of them, animal abusers all. Their bad behavior escalates from purposely playing their music too loud and leaving dog droppings behind to puncturing Steve’s back tire and later stealing his car.
And that’s just child’s play compared to the horrors these attention-starved demon kids have in store for the couple. Needless to say, Eden Lake plays like Deliverance with villains cast from juvie hall, and you wish that our heroes would Hulk out and kick in their teeth. When Steve and Jenny get separated, we wonder what might save their hides: her child-psych training or his knocking the teens senseless with his python-esque penis?
Neither. Jenny’s forced into Wrathful Ginger mode, rendering her as much as an animal as her predators, and you’ll be glued to her every step, whether she’s walking or running. She and Fassbender and excellent actors, so the film is not some garden-variety genre trash, even if its setup sounds so familiar. Writer/director James Watkins (The Woman in Black) wasn’t about to let it be average, as the work is not only taut, but plays for keeps. Even a viewer as jaded as I had to wince a couple of times. That’s high praise. —Rod Lott