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Eden Lake is a 2008 British horror thriller film written and directed by James Watkins in his directorial debut, and starring Kelly Reilly, Michael Fassbender and Jack O'Connell. The plot follows a young couple spending their romantic weekend at a remote lake, where they are confronted and hunted by a group of hostile youths. It is among a group of roughly contemporaneous films that deal with concerns over "Broken Britain" and a fear of "hoodies". Some of the close up scenes were filmed at Frensham Small Pond. Plot Steve Taylor and his girlfriend Jenny Greengrass set off for a romantic weekend away at a remote lake in the English countryside, where he plans to propose. Steve complains about the behavior of the local children and criticizes the parenting of the adults. In the woods, they meet a young boy named Adam, who is reluctant to speak to them. The couple's idyllic getaway is disrupted by a gang of rowdy teenagers. The next morning, Steve and Jenny find their food supplies infested with insects. At a local restaurant, Steve describes the teens to the waitress, who defensively insists her kids would never harass anyone. Steve sneaks into a house he believes belongs to the teens. He snoops around but escapes upon the return of Jon, the surly homeowner. Back at the lake, the couple discovers their car keys, Steve's phone, and wallet missing. Their car is also gone. Returning to town on foot, they avoid a collision with their own car, driven recklessly by the gang's psychopathic leader, Brett. Finding the gang in the woods after nightfall, Steve demands the return of his belongings. The teens pull out knives, and in the scuffle, Brett's dog is stabbed, sending Brett into a maniacal rage. The couple tries to flee, but the gang causes Steve to crash his car. With Steve trapped, Jenny is forced to run for help. At daybreak, Jenny stumbles upon the group. To her horror, they have tied Steve to a rock with barbed wire. Brett orders each reluctant teen to stab him so they will all be implicated, making it less likely for members to report the incident to police. Paige, the female gang member, records Steve's torture on her phone. Jenny distracts the gang so Steve can free himself but she is unable to nurse his fatal wounds. She finds the engagement ring in his pocket and wears it before hiding him and running for help. Jenny runs into Adam, who informs the gang of her location. They tie her, along with Steve's dead body, to a pile of wood; Brett forces Adam to light a bonfire while Paige films it. Jenny escapes and Brett necklaces Adam in retaliation. Jenny accidentally kills a younger gang member, Cooper, who was actually attempting to help her. After finding Cooper's body, Brett is thrown into further rage and beats another gang member to death. Paige flees in fear. Jenny steals a van, running over Paige in anger. She makes it back to town and crashes into a backyard party. She awakes being comforted by a woman and her husband Jon, and realises she is in Brett's house. The other parents are informed of the dead gang members, who are all the children of the adults at the house. Jenny locks herself in the bathroom for protection but Jon kicks the door in. As she begs them to call police, Brett convinces the adults that Jenny and Steve murdered the gang members. Jon says he'll put Jenny in the shower and takes her back into the bathroom with two other men, and the three begin to violently attack her. Brett shuts the door of his room, blocking out the sound of Jenny's screams. He deletes the videos of the gang's crimes from Paige's phone, puts on Steve's sunglasses, and stares blankly into a mirror. Cast Production Release Reception Critical response On Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, 81% of 31 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." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 65 out of 100, based on 7 critics, indicating "generaly favourable reviews ". 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 expresses fear and loathing of ordinary English people". Owen Jones, in his book Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class cites the film at length as an example of media demonisation of proletarian youth via the "Chav" stereotype. He comments, "Here was a film arguing that the middle classes could no longer live alongside the quasi-bestial lower orders." Eden Lake has been linked with other films that deal with concerns over "Broken Britain" and a fear of "hoodies," including Harry Brown, The Disappeared, Summer Scars, Outlaw, The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael, Cherry Tree Lane and Heartless. Accolades See also Cinema of the United Kingdom Mathil Mel Poonai, a 2013 Tamil language thriller that bears several similarities to Eden Lake. NH10, a Hindi movie loosely draws its plot from the film adapted to an Indian context. References External links Eden Lake at Box Office Mojo Eden Lake at IMDb Eden Lake at Rotten Tomatoes. Discover the James Eden popular books. Find the top 100 most popular James Eden books.