Eden Lake.

"Seriously bloody horrible in every particular, and uncompromisingly bleak to the very end, this looks to me like the best British horror film in years: nasty, scary and tight as a drum," writes the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. "It is a violent ordeal nightmare that brutally withholds the longed-for redemptions and third-act revenges, offering only a nihilist scream and a vicious satirical twist in our perceived social wounds: knife-crime, gangs and the fear of a broken society."

"While Eden Lake poses uncomfortable, possibly unanswerable, questions about gang culture and the disappearance of respect, one detects a more ambiguous conflict being raised." The Independent's Anthony Quinn: "It's not just about the adult fear of children, it's about the middle-class fear of a violent underclass... Daily Mail scaremongering? Possibly. But formidably well-made, all the same."

Updated through 9/15.

On the other hand, Neil Young: "Having starred in one of 2008's finest British films - Shane Meadows's Somers Town - young Thomas Turgoose now finds himself at the opposite end of the quality spectrum. It's perhaps just as well that Turgoose - despite a misleadingly prominent billing in the opening credits - has so very little to do in writer-director James Watkins's thuddingly opportunistic, crassly exploitative horror-thriller Eden Lake. His is a very minor supporting role which involves a bare handful of dialogue-lines, but it's still painful to see the lad in a movie so unworthy of his talents."

"[I]t's never far off ludicrous," agrees the Telegraph's Tim Robey.

In the Evening Standard, Derek Malcolm admires the "the crisp and powerfully effective story-telling," but: "Later, the parents of the miscreants, when we finally see them, are characterised as lumpen chavs and, while one doesn't subscribe to the tenets of political correctness in such films, more care was surely required before playing so thoroughly to what looks like a massive dose of prejudice."

More from Nigel Floyd in Time Out and James Christopher in the London Times.

The IMDb gathers more reviews.

Update, 9/14: "Watkins's film is gory, relentlessly tense, and immaculately paced," writes James Dennis at Twitch. "He rarely lets the audience guess the next move, which leads to some truly shocking moments. Terrifying is a term all too frequently used in relation to horror movies, but here it seems almost an understatement."

Update, 9/15: Online listening tip. Ambrose Heron talks with Watkins.

Posted by dwhudson at September 12, 2008 3:51 PM