Teenagers scare the living sh*t out of me!
Join BP, Coop and Justin as we discuss Eden Lake, the British 2008 horror in which Nursery school teacher Jenny Greengrass and her boyfriend Steve Taylor journey to a remote lake in the wooded English countryside. Steve has visited the spot before, and remembers it as an open area, but since his visit the land has been bought up by a development company. Despite “Keep Out” signs, they proceed to the lakeside, where they meet Adam, a young boy gathering insects.
As Steve and Jenny relax beside the lake, the peaceful setting is disrupted by a gang of rowdy teenagers, who have ridden their bicycles to a spot within a few metres of the young couple. Steve asks them to keep the noise down, but is met with abuse, and one boy accuses Steve of ogling his girlfriend. The next morning Steve and Jenny find their food supplies infested with insects, and their car tire damaged by a bottle left behind by the teens.
Driving into town for breakfast, Steve spots a house with bikes outside that he thinks belong to the teens. When no one answers the door, Steve enters the house and proceeds to snoop around. But on the return of Jon, the surly homeowner, Steve is obliged to make his escape from an upstairs window.
Back at the lake, Steve goes scuba diving while Jenny sleeps on the shore. Steve has been planning to propose, and is starting a story about “finding” the ring in the lake when he discovers that the bag with their car keys, phone and wallet is missing; their car is also gone. Returning to town on foot, they avoid collision with their own car, driven recklessly through the woods by the gang's psychopathic leader, Brett.
Finding the gang in the woods after nightfall, Steve demands the return of his belongings, only to be pounced by the knife-wielding teens. In the scuffle, Brett's rottweiler Bonnie is mortally knifed, provoking Brett into a maniacal rage. The couple grab the keys and drive off, but the gang throws stones at them, causing Steve to crash the car. With Steve trapped, Jenny is forced to run for help.
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On Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, 80% of 28 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 6.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "A brutal and effective British hoodie-horror that, despite the clichés, stays on the right side of scary."
Dennis Harvey reviewed the film for Variety and said that it was "an effectively harrowing Brit thriller-cum-horror pic," comparing it to Last House on the Left and Lord of the Flies. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw drew parallels with Deliverance, Straw Dogs and Blue Remembered Hills, and stated that "this looks to me like the best British horror film in years: nasty, scary and tight as a drum," concluding that the film was "exceptionally well made, ruthlessly extreme, relentlessly upsetting."
Other critics, however, have savaged the film, denouncing it as an incitement to class prejudice against working class people in Britain. The Sun condemned the film's "nasty suggestion that all working-class people are thugs" while The Daily Telegraph concluded that "this ugly witless film
