Collective Identity G325

Here's a clip from the last episode of Misfits where Nathan explains just what the role of youth has in society and just what representation of youth Misfits is trying to portray.

Click here to find an interesting written piece on Representation in TV.

In it the author divides up representation of youth into two categories: 'youth-as-fun' and 'youth-as-trouble' which we could translate as positive and negative representations of youth.

Here's where you see 'youth-as-trouble":
"Images of youth-as-trouble are not only limited to news media, but can be seen in soap operas. British soap operas serve as a forum for raising important issues about social problems featuring teenagers with common problems. As keepers of normalcy and common sense, these programs serve ideological interests by bringing forms of power, i.e. the adult, to support the interests of the teenager's bodies to be against teenage sex or acting out of control. By bringing power on the problem situations, adults on the programs are able to control the dominant ideas of the ruling class by controlling teenager's actions and thoughts into acting the right way. Deviant youth are represented as answerable to institutionally sanctioned ideas."

This is an interesting idea - that representations of youth-as-trouble often appear in news (as you can see in the posts on Demonisation) or in TV dramas, specifically soaps, as 'problems' that to be solved by the adults. It is through adult intervention that errant youths or problem teenagers can be shown the error of their ways and then continue on the correct path to adulthood.

Youth-as-fun, however, are usually seen in advertising or music videos (which are also trying to sell us something).
For instance here's the recent adidas advert:

We can all imagine a smiling, happy, white teethed youngster trying to sell us a soft drink or a pair of trainers, but as today's consumers are sophisticated readers of various texts, the stereotypical clean cut kid won't do. This is why advertisers use a third type: youth-as-trouble-as-fun. For example look at this hateful Samsung Jet advert.

Now drop Harry Brown into the universe of that advert and he'd be at them with kosh and a pair of pliers.

Again it can be argued that these representations are designed to influence youth into adhering to the establish adult culture, which in western countries is capitalism. In capitalism your role is to consume, and to work to consume, so while the image of having a warehouse party with Snoop, David and Dappy while wearing an pair of adidas original Rod Lavers may seen wild and free, you would have to have worked all week to pay for your shoes and the bus fare home.

Here's a interesting look at the Mods and Rockers fights from Brighton in 1964 and the role of the media in generating a moral panic.

What Stanley Cohen suggests is that the Media is key to a moral panic/outrage as it's their reaction to events that colour the public and sometimes political opinion. So if the Media (specifically in this case the news) make a drama out of event or social problem, this attracts more interest, perpetuating and amplifying the initial problem.

Have a look at this clip about the Acid House scene in the late 80s and the reasons why the journalist finds Acid House such a good 'story'.

Here's a clip from Charlie Brooker's Newswipe which has Dan Gardner explaining why the 'media' has a tendency to create (perhaps mediate??) moral panics.

Gardner suggests there often isn't necessary an agenda or a specific aim for the media when covering 'moral panics'. Instead there becomes an established 'narrative' which the press then look to continue. So if global warming is the big paper seller or the big story then global warming stories will be found and covered. This then spreads into other media - so sticking with the global warming idea with have all apocalyptic thrillers and disaster films - Day After Tomorrow, 2012, The Road. This also is partly because its works to sell people's fears back to them - so whatever the moral panic of the day is someone will tap into it.

Just to further ram this point home, here's Michael Moore on the demonisation of the black male in the US media.

Moving this back to youth, this demonisation and coverage of today's feral youth may have started in the press but it has developed its own narrative arch and grown into other media. So it's not just Eden Lake or Harry Brown that have evil hoodies, they also turn up in The Bill, East Enders and Casualty. They have developed into such a 'type', a well understood presence in the media that they've become a stereotype that can be challenged in shows such as Misfits and made fun of (see Super Hoodie, also the public school kids in Hot Fuzz).

It's even got to the point where youth organisations are fearing the social implications of this demonisation and the charity Barnado's have exaggerated them in this hard hitting advert that is definitely worth watching.

This last video is a little heavy going and concentrates on they way the Criminal Justice systems treats youths but it does raise an interesting idea of why the media does tend to focus on 'youth' in such a negative way.

It's because the state of our youth is often a symbol of how healthy a society is (try typing Broken Britain into google images and see how many pictures of youth you get). Subsequently the image of Britain's young people is a political issue which can be manipulated for a political agenda - for example Boris Johnson ran for Mayor of London with a focus of young people and crime in front of back drop of a series of high profile stabbings.

 

When discussing demonisation it is important to point out that 'youths behaving badly' isn't a new phenomenon and moral outrage about it is nothing new. Here's a few of quotes from way back in the day:

Here's one from Plato (428-348 BC)
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
Swap the word 'dainties' for 'Rustlers microwavable burgers' and he could be talking about today's youth.

Here's a report on the hooligan riots from 1898

'They wore peaked caps, neck scarves, bell-bottom trousers and a hairstyle cropped close to the scalp. There were pitched battles between rival gangs, armed with iron bars, knives, powerful catapults and even guns. They patrolled their neighbourhoods shouting obscenities and pushing people down.'

Compare that with the 2010 film Shank's vision of London 2015

It's quite similar just with less parkour.

Here's Alexander Dervine's (an educator and journalist) take on the reasons for the 1898 riots.
‘Lack of parental control, lack of discipline in schools, base literature (such as the sensationalist 'penny dreadful' novels about pirates and highwaymen) and the monotony of life in Manchester's slums were to blame for the urban guerilla warfare.'

And finally a quote from a 1939 report titled Needs of Youth:
‘Relaxation of parental control, decline of religious influence and the movemnt of masses of young people to housing estates where there is little scope for recreation and plenty for trouble… the problem is a serious challenge, the difficulty of which is intensified by the extension of freedom which, for better or worse, has been given to youth in the last generation.’

And here's a few up to date ones - firstly an exert from an article in the Sun focusing on 'Broken Britain' from Oct 2009:

'Outside two track-suited youths with a pit bull terrier straining at the leash are smirking as they roll what looks like a cannabis joint. Others in hoodies swill cider under signs banning public drinking. My attempts to chat with the youngsters are met with twisted snarls and revolting four-letter abuse. The scourge of feral youths was put in sharp focus earlier this month after suicide mum Fiona Pilkington was hounded to death by bad kids'

And from Gordon Brown from 2008:
'Kids are out of control... They're roaming the streets. They're out late at night.'

So this demonisation of youth is nothing particularly new. Also neither are the supposed causes of the bad behaviour - poor education, poverty, violence in the media, lack of opportunities, absence of parental guidance.

It is perhaps possible to argue, however, that the level of the demonisation is at a new high if you consider that it's remarkable to have Time magazine covering on the problems with UK youth as they did in March 2008

...and now 'hoodies' are the new bogeymen in thrillers and horror films (Eden Lake/Harry Brown).

Kids Rule OK is an interesting case of representation of youth - it's from a British comic called Action that specialised in ultra-violent stories and unsympathetic characters. Among the controversial content was Hook Jaw (a gratuitous rip off of Jaws), Look Out for Lefty (a Roy of the Rovers type strip that included scenes of football violence) and Hellman of Hammer Force (which followed the fortunes of German Panzer Major).

Action was so willfully controversial that it only lasted from October 1976 to November 1977, before publishers IPC closed it after Action was the centre of a campaign led by Mary Whitehouse and her National Viewers and Listeners Association to censor or ban the comic.

Kids Rule OK is set in the then future (1986) where all the adults have died off leaving the streets to the mercy of gangs of youths. But instead of helping to rebuild society they just knock lumps out of each other in horrific ways.This suggests that the only thing stopping youths going wild is order and adult guidance.

What's interesting though is this extremely negative representation of British youth hasn't been created to scare Daily Mail readers, it's been created to sell to and entertain British youth. This raises the question of whether representations of violent kids isn't just an adult nightmare but also a adolescent fantasy. As youth/kids have no real control over the world - politically, democratically, or financially - perhaps the only power they do have (the same as any other marginalised or alienated group) is the power of the angry mob.
What do you think of this? As a UK Youth what power do you have? Do you gain any sense of power/influence from the fact many adults are fearful of todays youth? Or do you wish for more positive representations?

More info on Kids Rule OK can be found on this excellent website sevenpennynightmare.

Kids Rule OK could be used when discussing past representations of youth but even if you don't use it, it's worth reading the final few pages of the comic just to see the hilariously contrived happy ending the writers gave it to appease the censors.

 

Sitcom surbubia with spots, guardian.co.uk

Whether it's a prison, an office, a hotel, a social class or a family, the best sitcoms deal with characters who are trapped in an exquisitely infuriating situation. From Harold Steptoe to Michael Bluth to Ted Crilley; their attempts to escape breed these great comic creations.

So, it's no surprise that two of the most frustrating situations with the best comic potential - adolescence and suburbia - are being tackled by E4 in its first original sitcom, The Inbetweeners, which continues tonight at 10pm .

Although the humour of the first two episodes owed more to American Pie's grossness than Steptoe's latent tragedy, the show still manages to catch the crap banter of the average 17-year-old within the frame of crap romance, crap pubs, crap house parties and a crap town pretty perfectly.

It's surprising that it's taken this long to put teenage and suburbia together. Reggie Perrinand The Officec aptured the suburban experience pretty brilliantly, but now the success of Skinshas made it easier for TV channels to trust young actors to carry more grown-up series. Suburbia and the uselessness of many 17-year-old boys (my past self included) ought to provide Inbetweeners writers Damon Beesley and Iain Morris with enough set pieces for a couple of seasons.

 

The Radio Times review of the show complained that "nothing rings true" about The Inbetweeners, but the thorough averageness of its setting makes it a more realistic riposte to the super-trendy world of Tony Stonem and company in Skins.

The Inbetweeners focuses its attentions on the more banal misadventures of its gang of teenage boys. Witness Will erupting in rage at being refused bar service in a carvery pub and managing to get his whole year group evicted at the same time. Or accusing his friend's dad of sexual assault. Or Simon spray-painting his love for his friend Carly on her dad's drive. Add to this low-rent indie music and house parties where the host's parents are sheltered upstairs. Obviously it's wildly exaggerated for lolz among its teen audience but the tone of the show ultimately proves more accurate for many sixth-formers than the glossy (but still excellently realised) Skins.

I spoke to the writers of some of the recent crop of shows about teenagers, including 20-year-old Tim Dawson who wrote the yet-to-be-broadcast Coming of Agefor BBC3 and the creators of Skins and The Inbetweeners and they agreed that the hormonal headspin of being teenaged, still fairly immature and trapped in a thoroughly average town mean that the emotional importance of relationships with the opposite sex and your friends can be blown up to disproportionate levels. This can make for cringing comedy gold, as viewers of The Inbetweeners might recognise when they follow the hapless Simon's pathetic attempts to woo Carly in the second of last week's episodes.

But, while being a suburban teenager may feel like a shackle, we all know (even as kids) that it's really quite safe. We might have thought that the local ring road was a metaphorical Berlin Wall to the bohemian explosion of creativity that would envelop one's self while studying English Lit at Birmingham - but if you grew up anywhere else than in this comfy trap where would the fun be at college?

You might be the coolest person in Oldham (which I wasn't by any means) but at the end of the day you're still only the coolest person in Oldham. Without the 21st-century poetic brutalism of the retail park you'd never appreciate the joys of big city life.

As The Inbetweeners proves - and Coming of Age may do too - being a teenager in suburbia may be intolerable, but ultimately it's usually quite an enlightening and fulfilling experience - not to mention a funny one.

The Inbetweeners, though obviously aimed at crude teenage boys (is there any other kind?), captures the pathetic sixth-form male experience quite splendidly.

Inbetweeners 'more realistic than Skins' - Digitalspy.co.uk

Simon Bird has said that his show The Inbetweeners gives viewers a more realistic depiction of teenage life than Skins.
The actor, who plays Will Mackenzie in the show, told the BBC that the cast often misbehave on set because they are dressed in school uniform.
Bird said: "Skins is great because it's this fantasy of what you want your teenage years to be whereas The Inbetweeners is what your teenage years actually were."
Co-star Joe Thomas said: "The Inbetweeners is more the time you spend not having the night that you thought you were gonna be having."
"Waiting to get somewhere, waiting for a bus to take you to a village [where] you might get into somebody's house party, that's the territory that we're involved in."

Last Night’s Television: The Inbetweeners, E4, independent.co.uk

Bit by bit, the series has plenty to recommend it. The acting's strong, especially from half-dozen or so main players. And it's properly funny, too. But – well, what to say? – it's just not Skins. There's no sex (aside from a failed attempt at fumbling from their teacher "paedo Kennedy"), no drugs (just a half-bottle of vodka that Will seems to think can be shared between – get this – the whole class). And, crucially, there's none of that knuckle-gnawing self-importance that characterises most teen show. Which, perhaps, is the problem: instead of laughing with the characters, we're laughing at them, at their naiveté, their youth. In fact, it's almost impossible to avoid the feeling that it has been written for adults, or, if not for adults, then by adults without much memory of adolescence. Most teenagers don't view themselves as quite the humorous bundle of awkwardness and charm that they seem here. That's something you develop later, a convenient way off shrugging of your own humiliating youth. Or maybe not, perhaps retrospect, like padded bras and pregnancy, arrives earlier with each generation. But for the moment, my teenage companion wasn't impressed. "It's rubbish," she grunted. "Not at all like Gossip Girl."

Hedgy comedy, guardian.co.uk

When The Inbetweeners debuted on E4 last year, what was so striking about it wasn't the fact that it managed to mimic the crap conversations of your average sixth former. It was that it did so without repulsing all but the most pottymouthed of teens. It's no mean feat, as BBC3's dismal teen comedy Coming Of Age proved.

The boys in The Inbetweeners range from pretty smart to pretty dumb to socially competent(ish). They're the kind of idiots whose day of bunking off school culminates in being sick on a seven-year-old's head, ending up in a London nightclub wearing a tramp's shoes and managing to get stuck at sea 10 metres away from a harbour. Unlike the polymer teens of most US dramas, they're the kids we actually were, rather than the ones we imagined we were.

Co-creators Iain Morris and Damon Beesley, whose other credits include Peep Show, Flight Of The Conchords and Free Agents, grew up on opposite sides of London in towns 40 miles apart from each other. Towns that, when they scouted locations for the show, they realised were exactly the same. And it's their suburban lives that provide the basis for Will, Simon, Jay and Neil's misadventures.

"I thought that my suburban existence was horrific," says Beesley. "I was desperate to get out, it seemed like a terrible place to grow up. I remember being 16 and sitting in my mum's kitchen and thinking to myself: 'If I end up here in 20 years' time in a house like this, I'm going to kill myself.' But then I stepped back into one of the houses when we were filming and I thought, 'Ooh, I can begin to see the appeal now.'"

"The key thing about suburbia as a setting," agrees Morris, "is that however cool you are, you're still only cool in suburbia. You can be the coolest person in Chertsey if you want to be, but you're still only the coolest person in Chertsey. There's something inherently comic about that."

The Inbetweeners - Reviews, TV & Radio - The Independent.co.uk

The main laughs derive from the exquisitely accurate dialogue, capturing the feel of adolescence perfectly. Jokes about mums and dads, jokes about lack of sex, all subtly crafted into the dialogue, make you laugh, simply because you would be able to hear the same conversation in your local Topman at three o'clock on a Saturday afternoon. And that is why it is utterly charming. It never tries to be anything it's not, it never pretends to raise moral issues or tackle strong taboos, it simply shows that being a teenager can be fun after all. For no-frills, unadulterated high-spirited camaraderie between four mates, The Inbetweeners simply cannot be beaten.

The Inbetweeners, avclub.com

All four of the guys at the center of this show are well-drawn people, the kinds of kids you might have gone to high school with yourself (if you went to a British public school, I guess). Refreshingly, none of them seems to belong to an outright clique or social group. All of them are just floating through the cracks, hoping to get by. (Hence the title.) By committing to telling stories about these four specific guys and the other people in their lives, The Inbetweenerspushes past any groaning about stories you've seen before to remind you that things become cliches because, well, they happen a lot in real life too.

But as funny as the show is (and it's very funny), the best thing about it is the fact that it has at its center four guys who are just feeling their ways toward adulthood, even if they don't yet quite grasp what that will mean. They're as awkward around the opposite sex as you probably were at that age, as desperate to have a good time that lets them forget their humdrum lives as you probably were at that age and as much in love with a good laugh with friends as you probably were at that age. The Inbetweenersdoesn't have a fresh, exciting new premise, but it does all of the little things right, and that level of craftsmanship is well worth tuning in for.

Lastly - cracking article from the makers of Inbetweeners in the Guardian.

Episode 1 - Page One

Watch (Press Gang) 01x01 - Page One.avi in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Episode 2 - Photo Finish

Watch (Press Gang) 01x02 - Photo Finish.avi in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Watch the whole series here

http://www.veoh.com/search/videos/q/press+gang

Click here for a look at the main characters

Similarities with contempoary representations
Intergenerational conflicts - arguments with teachers or adults exploiting youth.
Experimentation with relationships (Spike & Lynda), petty crime (Spike, Colin).

Differences with contempoay representations
The explicitness of depictions of relationships/sex/petty crime (compare Spike and Misfit's Nathan)
The Press Gang are together creating something constructive and positive (a youth paper) - compare that with Misfits or even Inbetweeners.
Many of the characters are fulfilling adult roles with all the associated responsibility: Lynda - Editor/manager, Colin - business man, Sarah - investigative journalist

Some thoughts: For the girls we get an explicit stripping away of part of their identity - Kelly the hard face chav, Alisha the man-eater - when they are alone. So they have an identity they show the outside world, but this could be to hide certain vulnerabilities or to fit in. This is what I think Misfits does really well, it initially presents us with stereotypes but then gradually adds dimensions to each of the characters to created representations of adolescence that can be related to.

 

Go and explore the official Misfits website. It's a fantastic mix of clips, games and feeds to the characters social media.

Misfits - Interviews - Howard Overman Interview - Channel 4

Do the five central characters have to use their superpowers to fight evil? 

They kind of do, but the point of the show is really that the world doesn't always break down into these neat categories of good versus evil. Our kids are all convicted criminals, after all, and they party hard and all the rest of it. So they,re quite unconventional heroes, but their fundamental nature is good. What they find themselves battling is their own personal issues, and a world that has become much more complicated by their powers. It’s more about that than battling some evil force that wants to take over the world - although the final episode is a kind of bigger climax. And it's also about the people close to them who might suddenly have discovered powers, from friends to step-dads. It's more about that than the ideas of a stereotypical nemesis who wants to take over the world. The series plays on the whole nature of antisocial behaviour and teen behaviour and what's right and what's wrong, rather than it being about good and evil.

Are you making a point about how we demonise teenagers with this series? Are you saying we're too judgmental about that generation? 

I think that's sort of in the DNA of the show. We don't ever really discuss it in the show. The middle England attitude towards teenagers has been well-documented, and this isn't the sort of show where we make overtly political points, so I think it's more that it's in the premise of the show. To be fair, these kids aren't angels, they've all been found guilty of what they did. They're kids who got up to what a lot of us did as teenagers, but they maybe pushed it a bit more or just got caught. They're not outrageous, but they're not angelic either. They're not feral kids, they're not mean and nasty, they're not mugging or stabbing people, but they might be from slightly the wrong side of the tracks.

You're writing about teenagers. As a 36-year-old, how do you write characters of that age?

I think it's just about making sure you remember what it was like, and drawing on how you felt as a teenager. I don't think having your heart broken now is any different from how it felt when we were 18. I think it's about just remembering what it was like. And I think these days we all grow up so much more slowly than we used to. I still enjoy much the same things that I did in my early 20s, so it's not like that much has changed. And once you've got the characters, you get into a zone with them and you hear their voice and think about how they'd react in any given situation. And when we got the actors on board I did sessions with all the actors to make sure they were happy with the dialogue.

 

REVIEW: Misfits, The Superhero TV Show From E4 BleedingCool.com

This is a drama about an abandoned underclass, with their fears, their hopes and their dreams turned from subtext into text, exaggerated into superpowers. So we have a introvert turned invisible man, a man with regrets able to turn back time, one concerned with how everyone sees her able to read thoughts, a hyper-sexualised extrovert giving out orgasms at a touch and an overconfident spiv with…. nothing. So far. Oh and their community officer is seriously on their case.

Kelly is a chav. A ned. A redneck. Poor of background, financially and culturally, she defines herself with certain bling, and aggressive attitude and a Croydon facelift, hair pulled back so tight it takes the bags under the eyes with it. As a telepath, she thinks she’s hallucinating, still tripping on something as she can hear her fellow Misfits, boyfriend, even her dog’s thoughts. A remarkable and original twist on the gift. And so it takes her a long time to put things together. No nosebleeds, no head full of everyone speaking, external thoughts come rarely, but when they do come, she can’t help but acting as if they were spoken to her. Hence fight scenes.

Alisha is an empowered young lady not afraid to use her body and sexuality to impress, tease and entertain, Basically, she’s a slut. Sorry, but she is. And her power to make any man attracted to her to the point of rape scares her silly, confronting her about the dangers in the world and her effect on those around her in a way she’s clearly never cared about before.

There’s a sensational juxtaposition of Alisha blowing her water bottle for the entertainment of the other male cast, while Kelly is being pursued by one trying to kill her. The back and forth contrasts the world that was with the world that is to come.

Curtis the failed sports star done for drugs possession has had the farthest to fall. And with an ability to turn back time, but not far enough, his frustrations can only continue. His life experience probably makes him the most sane and mature of the lot of them. But then that’s not saying too much.

It’s also worth pointing out that Overman tells us there are many more superpowered indivuals to come, but many with very poor powers that reflect their emotional state when the lightning hit. However he rejects the labels of hero and villain here, seeing only people and their very human desires, albeit exaggerated ones.

Simon, Mr Invisible, the shy awkward nerd with a history of arson and some strange fetishes that come to the fore when Alisha touches him. He’s clearly scared that he’s mad, and the teasing of the group only convinced him further. This is a far more realistic reaction to receiving superpowers than is usually granted to them. The most unknown of the group, the second episode sees the inevitable locker room scene, but on the form of the first episode, it’s most likely to go off at a very different angle.

Nathan, the man without powers but with a mouth to make up for it. Reminiscent of Dexter Fletcher’s Spike Thompson in Press Gang, we get to see more of his scared, lonely side, that hides behind a brash exterior, a family who have rejected him and friends who abandon him, never affecting his exterior of cool cohesion. Sexually confident, and probably with every right to be.

And they all gel together through common experience, even if their personalities drive them away. This is your ultimate dysfunctional superhero team, hell, they have no idea if they even want to be superheroes. There are so many other options out there.

 

 

 

The poster for the French release leaves you in no doubt which 'collective' is repsonsible for the terror in Eden Lake.

Andrea Hubert on why young Brits are now the stars of the teen slasher movie - The Guardian

The secret of success is simple. We're so convinced in the utter bleakness of the teenage condition, we make our teenage movie monsters as evil as the tabloids would have us believe - and utterly, utterly believable. It's why the tortured middle class heroine of Eden Lake never makes it back from the hell that is her death-by-hoodie.

When Brits want to be scared, we grab hold of a Daily Mail idea that actually terrifies us, which, as it turns out, isn't things that go bump in the night but relentless bullying, kids with knives, and drug-fuelled promiscuity on cheap package holidays.

Libby Brooks: If horror films help us confront our worst fears, working-class kids have become the stuff of middle-class nightmare,  - The Guardian.co.uk

Of course, the horror genre has a strong tradition of using children as ciphers - although at least in The Omen series, young Damien had the excuse of being Satan's spawn. This year we have watched dead-eyed happy-stabbers similarly terrorise the innocent middle classes in The Strangers and Michael Haneke's update of Funny Games. It's not for nothing that the Daily Mail reviewed Eden Lake as though it were a documentary, or the Sun's film critic angrily contested the "nasty suggestion that all working-class people are thugs".

If horror's main function is to confront our worst nightmares and allow us to think the unthinkable, then this film does so with bells on. It's genuinely terrifying, and meanly pitched, and I'd recommend it to anyone who loves horror films. But it leaves a very bad taste in the mouth. Because Eden Lake suggests that what we most fear today is not the supernatural or the alien, but children - specifically working-class children - and their boozy, indiscriminately shagging, incompetent parents. And the reason for that lingering aftertaste is that it's true.

Eden Lake frightens because feral youth (or knife crime, however you want to identify it) exist as much as a truism as a trope. The media - and I and the Guardian are no different - have come to use those terms often without understanding what they really mean, or whom they include.

Eden Lake, The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw

Quite recently, I saw a gutwrenching short film called Soft, by Simon Ellis, which evokes similar ideas to Eden Lake; then, as now, I was reminded of something that the late Alexander Walker, film critic of the London Evening Standard, once wrote about Kubrick's Clockwork Orange: we hate and fear our children - because they are going to kill us. Eden Lake has the same idea. The confrontation here isn't about race and not even exclusively about class; it's not about townies and hillbillies, or blacks and whites, or yuppies and chavs. At bottom, it's about older people and the young: a gang of feral children who are as powerful as adults. They instinctively exploit the indulgences and prerogatives extended to them as children, having semi-comprehendingly imbibed a sense of resentment and entitlement from their own elders.

Eden Lake may be the best British horror in years but it could be exploiting our fear of stranger danger | Film | guardian.co.uk

It's the credibility of all this that makes Eden Lake one of the few great British horror films. Because the events it portrays are so firmly rooted in reality, you may find that the alarm they evoke fails to evaporate when the credits start to roll. It could follow you into the street and stay with you thereafter.

But is that wholly to be welcomed? This is a film that exploits our fear of our fellow citizens in a way which can only deepen our dread. Watkins thinks Eden Lake is about that topic so favoured by anxious columnists, our new-found terror of our children. He's wrong. In his film, the Lord-of-the-Flies-style disinhibition of the as yet insufficiently socialised young acts as the mere accelerant of something more disturbing.

The youths we see aren't feral. They have homes to go to and parents who value them. These, however, are the kind of parents who nip round to the classroom to punch the teacher who's told off one of their kids. They're the people who might come at you with a tyre wrench during a road-rage spat. And it's these people, not their children, who cause most trouble for Eden Lake's lovely heroine.

Eden Lake Review – Daily Mail.co.uk

At last! Here's a first-rate British horror film that taps into our deepest fears and offers a thought-provoking insight into such topical subjects as knife crime and gang culture.
It's a thoroughly credible set-up and the process of escalation whereby Jenny and Steve alienate, then anger these feral youths until they're ready to stab, torture and even burn them to death is worryingly authentic.
Unlike most horror films, in which the heroes steer themselves into danger by their own stupidity, Jenny and Steve behave with complete plausibility and a tragically unrequited sense of kindness and social responsibility.
Eden Lake delivers plenty of tension and vicarious excitement. But it's also willing to say what other films have been too scared or politically correct to mention: the true horrors we fear day to day are not supernatural bogeymen or monsters created by scientists. They're our own youth.
This film will doubtless be accused of class hatred and demonising chavs, especially by those who accuse newspapers such as the Daily Mail of whipping up public concern over innocent victims of street gangs.
The obvious point never seems to occur to these people that we are right to feel concerned about the stabbing of headmaster Philip Lawrence outside his own school gates in 1995 or the way the murderers of Stephen Lawrence are walking free. We wouldn't be fully human if we weren't. And it's made abundantly clear within the film that the guilty youths are often the offspring of parents who have jobs and might be called middle class, but who have lost their moral compass and any feelings of responsibility towards their children.
Far from demonising the gangmembers, there's an underlying compassion towards them, along with a sad realism about mankind's potential for barbarism. It's the same feeling that made a classic of William Golding's Lord Of The Flies.
The film is remarkably strong on the dynamics of the gang, with its psychotic leader (played by Jack O'Connell as a variation on Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange) bullying, manipulating and incriminating his less daring colleagues until they become as vicious as he is.
You can see from his attachment to his dog that she is the only love he has in his life - and wait until you meet his parents.
Uncaring or absentee parents are the true villains, mostly unseen until the unpleasant end, but an implied presence throughout.

SPOILER: END OF FILM