Eden Lake

James Watkins wrote and directed his first feature, and getting the director’s chair took some doing. He spent the single opt-out in his Working Title deal on this script, then shot two short films to prove himself, so that financiers could be handed a seven minute DVD. The second short rebuilt the film’s torture and chase passage over three days. Watkins films the effect of violence more than the act. The scene where the boy is burned was staged as a stunt and covered by two cameras; the long lens mid shot was never used, and the event passes in the background in a moment. Through the torture passage the camera sits mostly on the gang: frightened looks, one of them being sick, hands shaking. Watkins says he had no other ending. He also says he refused to turn the schoolteacher into a figure who settles accounts in the last reel. At the 14th Empire Awards the film won Best Horror, ahead of The Mist, The Orphanage and The Strangers. Best British Film went to RocknRolla that night. A good fit if you want the weight of violence read off the face of the person doing it. Not for anyone waiting for the victim to rally and take revenge; the director declined to write that.