James Watkins directs James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis and Scoot McNairy in this thriller where a family travel to the Cornish countryside for a weekend with the seemingly nice but intense couple they met on holiday.

A one-watch movie. You see the storytelling bung a plethora of random objects and over emphasised “heads ups”. Blatantly so you can watch out for them all being caught in “clever” ways during the juggle of the third act Straw Dogs-esque finale. The whole movie pivots on how polite would you be when everything points towards your very genial hosts being psycho killers? And somehow the movie manages to spin this wobbly, fragile plate for a surprisingly long time. Too long for this ever to be worth a revisit. I mean we all grew up on the schlocky yuppie in peril potboilers back in the day. The positives are obvious. McAvoy’s full fat smiling villain turn. The fact that someone has cast Aisling Franciosi in a prominent role after she was so brilliant in The Nightingale. And that James Watkins is back in his Eden Lake stomping ground. The movie itself I can take or leave… at best I’ll hunt down the Danish original just to play spot the difference.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Eden Lake (2008)