Eden Lake (2008)

(In French, On Cable TV, January 2020) Well, well, well: Before becoming an acclaimed Oscar-nominated actor, then a headliner for baffling big-budget pictures, and then not doing much for a few years, Michael Fassbender headlined a nasty horror movie called Eden Lake. His presence, and the film’s ultra-bleak ending, are almost the only noteworthy things about it. Here we have an ordinary couple who eventually becomes the target of a group of disaffected teenagers who are evil because the script demands it. No further explanations being required (although there are links here with the reactionary “Broken Britain” movement), we’re clearly in grindhouse exploitation territory as the film inflicts torment over torment to the couple until there’s nothing left of them. Cheaply hand-waving “society” for the teenage cruelty, Eden Lake is never meant to be uplifting or generous—it’s one streak of bad luck after another, using its protagonists as bloody piñatas until the end. (It keeps one fatal coincidence in reserve just to drive the point home.) It would be depressing if it actually meant anything, but beyond elementary genre thrills from director James Watkins (who would go on to do far better and weightier fare), Eden Lake can easily be dismissed as nothing more than a mediocre horror film.