Eden Lake

This is a fairly modern horror film and one that I had been eager to watch for some time. Set in contemporary Britain, it's about a middle class couple who go out into a secluded location for a weekend together and instead encounter with the local youths. This is a horror film, so it's not going to be a surprise to discover that the youths are a pack of half-feral social outcasts who play their music too loud, behave lewdly and brandish a huge great hulking dog. There is a lot of blood in this film once it gets going.

When the film came out it received a lot of mixed and interesting reviews. Some people opposed the film's view of small town Britain, with families that are too tight-knit for their own good and refuse to discipline children. Other reviews took a dim view of the characterisation; are kids really that bad? Would otherwise nice middle class people really react like that? It is annoying that this word has to be used, but it is almost impossible to watch the film without seeing the kids as 'chavs' – unruly working class kids who act menacingly and appear to have no moral fiber or respect for others.

Rather than casting the story in a modern light in which annoying terms like 'chav' are banded about, I prefer to see the story as one that could have could have been told in any era. Misbehaving children who show a lack of respect to adults; it's hardly a modern phenomena. 'Rebel without a Cause' was over 50 years ago for Christ sake! It's a story in mould of 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre', in which an isolated community behaves in a way that's anathema to the sensibilities of the rest of civilisation. It just so happens that this community happen to be in modern day Britain. I'm pretty sure that the film makers aren't having a dig at local British working class communities; if anything they're having a go at the Middle classes, in which the 'have a go' culture and stubborn determination to 'not let them win' ends up exacerbating a situation which could easily have been diffused by simply ignoring it.

As far as a gory horror film goes, it ticks all the right boxes and I recommend having a watch.