Eden Lake

“Run for the hills, the hoodies are coming!”. Well, not quite, but that was the general response to James Watkins’ debut feature, a backwoods horror yarn in which middle class couple Jenny (Reilly) and Steve (Fassbender) find themselves at the mercy of an aggressive youth gang during a camping weekend. The film’s setup will be familiar to anyone who has seen an early Wes Craven or Tobe Hooper film (or one of the recent remakes), and the efficient first hour does little to dispense with convention or cliché. That the film still works has much to do with the excellent work by the cast, particularly the youngsters (including This Is England’s Thomas Turgoose), who bring genuine credibility and pathos to what could so easily have been Daily Mail headlines on film. And this is where the film succeeds, taking the audience’s prejudices and assumptions and throwing them right back, while the genuine shocker of an ending is up there with The Vanishing.