Controversial British film so scary you ‘can only watch it once’ is on Amazon | Films | Entertainment

What makes a film truly terrifying is personal. It might be gore or ghosts, depending on what gets under your skin, but for some, it’s a British slasher flick where the monsters are hoodie-clad teenagers.

In Eden Lake, a brutal horror film released on Halloween back in 2008, a couple head to a remote lake for what should have been a romantic weekend getaway. Steve (Michael Fassbender) is about to pop the question to his girlfriend, a nursery school teacher called Jenny (Kelly Reilly). Alas, their camping trip is interrupted by a psychopath, as played by Jack O’Connoll, and his group of sadistic youths. Its taut 90-minute runtime packs in so much violence that viewers have sworn off the film and its “pants-wetting terror”.

Eden Lake has earned a 76% approval score on Rotten Tomatoes. The review aggregate website summed up critics’ responses to the film as such: “A brutal and effective British hoodie-horror that, despite the clichés, stays on the right side of scary.”

The unassuming film scared the living daylights out of one film journalist who selected it for The Guardian’s “Film that frightened me most” series.

“I had no idea what was coming,” he wrote, adding: “It remains one of the most brutally terrifying experiences in my life.”

“Certain images have remained imprinted in my mind since (if you’re ever in the mood for some prolonged scenes of facial mutilation-by-Stanley-knife, Eden Lake’s your film) and when the credits eventually rolled, I felt like I’d been through 12 rounds with Mike Tyson rather than 90 minutes with Michael Fassbender.”

Empire echoed this sentiment in their review, noting: “You don’t watch it, you survive it. A battering experience, and the hardest Brit horror in years.”

“Eden Lake is very much in the business of pant-wetting terror. The discomfort begins early on, wastes no time in spiralling hellishly out of control, and, with its conclusion, treats the viewer with steadfast sadism.”

The film has scarred its share of audience members too. “It’s a good movie but it’s one and done,” shared one person on Reddit‘s horror forum.

“I actually tried to rewatch Eden a few days ago since it was on TV but I got to the scene when they first arrive to the beach and nah, I just don’t want to relive all that again.”

Detractors of the film have found it off-putting for reasons unrelated to horror. Given the villains of the film are working class teens, Eden Lake has been criticised as classist.

Another viewer commented, “I really disliked the role class clearly played – it’s only working class characters that are shown as poor parents.”

Likewise, in his book Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class, Owen Jones criticised: “Here was a film arguing that the middle classes could no longer live alongside the quasi-bestial lower orders.”

Eden Lake is currently available to stream on Amazon Prime and Apple TV.