Eden Lake 2008

Eden Lake Is a British horror film written and directed by James Watkins.
The films location is unknown but the director states it is set somewhere in the midlands.
This is not a typical teen horror movie. James Watkins has said he thought of the idea for Eden Lake a couple of years before the knife crimes and london youth scares, however this film does touch quite predominately on this subject and feels like a reaction to the moral panic in the press. Also highlighted in this film is a common theme of the clash between the city and the country. In other films such as The Hills Have Eyes, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Wrong Turn the main characters are people from the city who are alienated by being in the country. The town within eden lake also challenges this as well as thew town is undergoing construction and urbanization. They feel powerless as they are out of their comfort zone and are easily picked off by the threat of the country dwellers. The other theme is a generational gap between adults and teenagers/ youths. Drawing from the the 'slasher' genre it is established that one of the scariest threats is another human being who has gone beyond reasoning.
This sets up a rich tapestry for the plot of Eden Lake to revolve around. Eden Lake challenges our expectations so far as to make the teenagers the killers within the film. It tries to offer some reasoning behind there actions, this is basically revenge for the accidental killing of one of the youths (brett) dog by one of the 2 main protagonists Steve. It is also established towards the end of the film that peer pressure is also relevant and the quite disturbing idea of child abuse and the parents being partly to blame, this is a problem that is very much embedded in reality which is why it is so scary. Watching this film you could believe this could really happen. We the audience are not removed from this, we are not in the realms of fantasy or make believe. This  film does not feel like a typical genre piece, it could easily sit alongside films such as kidulthood and would not look out of place.