Eden Lake

(18) 90min

For obvious reasons, youth violence has become a favourite theme of British horror films recently. It’s strange that this trend seems to be going from strength to strength as none of the films, from Thomas Clay’s 2005 shocker The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael to this year’s Donkey Punch have been particularly good or done good box office.

Here, James Watkins, who wrote 2002 reality TV horror My Little Eye, makes his directorial debut with dire consequences. Watkins’ penchant for visceral and extreme horror diminishes any innovation he may have hoped to bring to the genre. Interesting and good looking character actors Kelly Reilly and Michael Fassbender blot their copybooks playing a couple on a romantic getaway that is fatally disrupted by a gang of urchins drawn straight from hysterical Daily Mail headlines. Technically and aesthetically Eden Lake is torturous, ridiculous and bloodily tedious. How films this bad get funding in the first place is the only real horror here.

General release from Fri 12 Sep.