Five Across The Eyes (2006).

Five high school girls get lost in the backwoods and are chased for the entirety of the film by a psychopathic killer (also female - here's a nice promo image of her).

Even though the DVD artwork hints at a higher budget, the moment I saw the Imagination Worldwide logo glowing on screen, I got flashbacks of The Hamiltons (review here) and knew exactly what was in store: not the worst movie ever but more than likely one which, a couple more drafts and edits down the line, could have been greatly improved upon.

To start with the good: the low budget look and feel does lend itself nicely to the more grisly moments. Watching someone getting their teeth bashed in on what looks like a home video is always going to have more impact.

Smaller scoped flicks like this are also prone to push the envelope with what type of atrocities are committed, and how. Five Across The Eyes has a rape by screwdriver in it, downplayed to the extent you almost miss it. You've got to respect that.

Now, the less good.

The running time of 95mins feels much longer and considering that the action in the movie amounts to watching these kids drive, cry, scream, get tortured, retaliate, repeat... a huge chunk of this should have been sheared off to make for a tighter, tauter story. This isn't rocket science and I don't know why it happens so bloody often.

By all means have much of the story take place in (and all of it shot from, apparently) the van, but realise that over an hour and a half of this is going to get a bit repetitive? Kill your babies in the edit people, c'mon!

There's also the fact that - and maybe I'm just speaking with my gender representation hard-on here - all of the characters are women, but nothing is ever really done with this. Yes okay, on the one hand that's cool, because why should it be an issue? Can't they just be characters in a narrative, women are people too, etc etc? And yet I still feel the tagline of this film should have been "An Opportunity Wasted".

I don't need something to write a thesis on, but a little more depth and a lot less screaming wouldn't have gone amiss.

There's a glint of something here, which makes it all the more frustrating. Although it may feel like it for the most part, not all characters are screamers. Within the group there is a spectrum of toughness and like the previously reviewed Eden Lake, as the ordeal becomes worse and more prolonged, the likelihood of vengeance wreaking from the good guys increases.

Indeed, a leveling shift in all of the girls at the end of the film means they've experienced enough to be able to fight back, setting upon their enemy like a pack of dogs.

And they really go to town on this bitch. Not stopping at beating her; they also repeatedly stab and... set her alight.

Intense! Yet the above doesn't happen until the final twenty minutes or so - AND another mistake is made of not ending with this bleak, cold sequence. Instead, everyone clambers back into the van, we're treated to more driving and a really lame joke before the credits finally roll.

The film feels like someone trying to pick up a ball but every time they get close to it, their big clumsy feet kick it away again.

Let The Right One In (2008).

Beautiful and sweet. It almost feels a disservice calling it a horror film. Why should that be so? I feel like a traitor to my favourite genre, saying as much.

Yet it also shows what a great thing horror can be; that so much diversity can exist under the one name. The nastiness of Eden Lake and the innocence of this film can be bedfellows - or at least housemates.

Let The Right One In is still. Quiet. Slow. It's not that nothing happens, more a case of what does happen is calm, and measured. With simple storytelling and no histrionics, the film is riveting. The child actors are phenomenally good, giving subtle older-than-their-years performances in a film about growing up, love and survival.

Oskar is a lonely boy, regularly bullied at school. One night he meets Eli in a snowbound jungle gym. Wary of one another at first, their friendship grows over time until it blossoms tentatively into tender young love.

The only problem is that although Eli looks like a twelve year old girl, her innocent visage hides her true age, and darkness. She is a vampire.

Her "condition" is looked after initially by a helper in the form of an older gentleman. For the sake of appearances, he poses as her father. For the sake of Eli's survival, he commits murder.

In the book upon which the film is based, this man (by the name of Håkan) has paedophile tendencies, and that is why he becomes part of Eli's life; to be closer to her. This is downplayed in the adaptation; a decision I think was the right one. Not to say that his sinister intentions wouldn't have sat right, because they probably would have - sweet or not, Let The Right One In is cold and mean at times. For a sleeker narrative though, his story was expendable.

Håkan is nonetheless still portrayed as a mightily creepy fellow. Who, unable to deal with Eli finding a soulmate in Oskar (and possibly finally feeling the burden of his countless murders) disfigures himself with acid, then lets Eli drink from him.

It's a touching moment: this man who has given up years to serve her, to feed her, ultimately himself becomes a meal to her. His last act is to offer, and be taken.

Eli must then fend for herself. Oskar at first oblivious to her secret, then helplessly entwined and bewitched by it.

Moments of bloodshed in this movie come as a bit of a shock. Feeling as it does, a little highbrow (at least in relation to the normal cache of films a horror fan will watch) when this gets messy in its own restrained yet nasty way, it's genuinely startling.

Håkan's last breath.

The cinematography contributes to this too, as the carefully chosen background upon which the gore is smeared. The look of the film is cold, the colours muted; the red blood standing out against pale snow and skin. Like another movie I've reviewed, in fact.

If somehow the film doesn't appeal because of its plot, then see it just because it's so fucking pretty. Seriously. I could have capped nearly every shot to illustrate this.

I love that one in particular. It reminds me of studying graphic design and how much I used to love drawing things in two point perspective.

So carefully chosen and composed. The visuals are works of art, there's no denying it.

As much as I like hideous acts and depressing endings, horror when it is as beautiful and wonderful, heartbreaking and life-affirming as this... Well, it's a special thing indeed.

If you are late to view this like I was, rectify that immediately.

Donkey Punch (2008).

Peruse that and imagine the film it's for. Now don't bother seeing Donkey Punch. Because the flick you've just thought of is more than likely better.

How a kill involving an outboard motor can be disappointing I'll never know, but somehow this manages it.


I check out films like this because I know the characters will be detestable, disposable pricks. I enjoy seeing them set up, then offed.

This delivers on the pricks but fails on what it does with them. Cue dissatisfaction.

The sex scene, the hook upon which most of the publicity was hung, is indeed more graphic (and longer) than other films of this type. It's just a sex scene though, ultimately. A group of unlikeable characters fucking one another.

If you want sex, watch a porno. If you want a decent horror/thriller? Don't watch this.

Eden Lake (2008).

This one got under my skin.

It's nasty. The experience of watching this film is like hearing of a terrible thing happening to someone you went to school with: you take it in and think you deal with the information... but it just keeps resurfacing in your mind for days afterward.

Eden Lake concentrates on Jenny (Kelly Reilly) a white middle-class teacher. Jenny is pretty and wears pretty dresses. She and her boyfriend Steve head to the country for the weekend, to the shores of a lake surrounded by acres of forest and miles from the nearest town. He is going to propose, it seems, as he is carrying an engagement ring around with him. Oh dear, if there is ever a death knell for a couple in this genre, it's that.

All is dandy for a time. They aren't strictly meant to be on this land, but Steve is familiar with the area and they take their Land Rover cross-country, laughing at the sat-nav telling them to turn back. You just know this moment is weighted, despite their joviality. If only they had listened to that seemingly meaningless warning.

But the couple aren't alone at Eden Lake, and the other occupants of this idyllic spot aren't hiding behind trees and stalking them in the dark, either.

They are a group of local teenagers who do not give one solitary shit about out-of-towners. They swear, spit, let their Rottweiler pester a sunbathing Jenny and generally make their obnoxious presence very, very known.

Now, this in and of itself is certainly annoying and rude behaviour to more civilised folk, shall we say. However, it doesn't just stop at one of the group taunting the couple and flashing his knob. Unfortunately for them - and fortunately for those who like their horror grim and realistic - it gets so much worse than that.

Eden Lake transforms from haven into battleground. The leader of the group, Brett (Jack O'Connell) has no moral barometer. At all. With threats and taunting he forces his friends to join him in committing appalling acts, demanding they be filmed on a mobile phone so that on every level everyone is implicated. Once they have all taken the first steps together, it's hard for any of them to break away from the spiraling violence. This is a tough watch (especially so with the wonderful Thomas Turgoose in one of the roles).

Making Jenny a teacher is a nice touch. We only see her teaching young children, they look about six or seven years old, but she's shown as a kind and caring person. When the couple visit a local pub and witness a mother disciplining her child, Jenny winces and looks entirely uncomfortable. Not preachy or disapproving even, just hurt by the child's hurt.

This woman deals with children as a career, a vocation. She, next to the parent, is meant to represent the ultimate in trustworthiness when it comes to youngsters.

But what about when pushed?

So, what a transformation she undertakes. By the end of the film, this woman has killed or seriously injured at least two young adults. In the film's most harrowing moment, she is responsible for a sweet and wholly innocent child being fucking set alight. His pleas turning to screams as she makes the terrible decision to save her own skin, rather than his.

Her character is pushed, pushed pushed. The increments are extremely important because if the leap is too large, the thread that keeps the viewer believing in this story, snaps. Yet here it's taken up one small notch, one awful incident at a time. Enough of these accumulate to eventually turn this woman feral.

No decision she was forced to make seemed wrong at the time, but under the cumulative weight of them she becomes, in the eyes of the parents of the youths involved and perhaps of the law too, the more guilty. Should she have known better, or acted differently, because "They're just kids"? Are there shades of grey where monstrous acts are involved?

The "civilised turning wild" theme is a path well trodden and yet Eden Lake doesn't suffer at all for this fact. It takes the idea cross country, forges a new path and feels terrible all over again.

Yes, of course including the death of the dog.

Stab a man's Rotty and live to regret it.

I don't know if it's because this is a British film, that it hit so hard. It deals with what are essentially "hoodies" (what the mother fuck that cartoon is there, I do not know) a special brand of disenfranchised British youth. Living as I do in South East London, I cross paths with kids who appear similar to the ones here, every single day. Angry, volatile and relishing how intimidating they are. It's never a pleasant experience.

Eden Lake isn't a nice film, but it is a very good one. Brutal without being over the top and not afraid to end on a massive fucking downer, you'll be left feeling hollow but mighty impressed with writer/director James Watkins' debut.