Eden, Adam and ....
Driving through the British countryside late at night a young American couple, Adam (Ben Gardner Gray) and Rachel (Cyd Casados), hit something in the road resulting in car trouble. It is why they end up walking the short distance to the remote Eden Lodge guest house run by Mrs. Wilkes (Ellie Dickens) and her son where they stay the night till next day the handyman, Robert (Garry Mannion), can take a look at the car. But mysterious things are going on in Eden Lodge with those who trespass on the land never leaving and Mrs. Wilkes' son coming and going.
For a few brief minutes I genuinely thought "Eden Lodge" was going to break the mould and be a low budget British horror movie which didn't feel low budget. Those few minutes came during the opening credits which had a Hitchcock-esque feel about them with a great orchestral score tied to some simple but vibrant graphics. Sadly the opening credit sequence is the best that "Eden Lodge" gets and the rest of this British horror movie becomes a test of your stamina to endure the sort of mindless, cliche filled horror which makes you proclaim "never again".
In truth before you get to that opening credit sequence there is a scene of two young women go camping and seem to not only be inappropriately dressed in shorts on what looks like a frosty morning, go figure, but they walk across the middle of a farmer's field and you immediately start to get that ominous sense that "Eden Lodge" is going to be poor. And that is the case as get beyond the opening credits and we have a lot of American horror cliches from broken down cars to a creepy mother and son running a guest house in the middle of nowhere. We also have some acting which makes you question whether this was intended as a horror spoof.
But I suppose the worst thing about "Eden Lodge" is that on one hand you have scenes around the guest house with Rachel finding herself drawn to the "hunky" handyman whilst Adam finds himself drawn to a young dark haired American girl called Pomona. Plus there are scenes of Mrs. Wilkes talking to her son who seems to come and go in a blink of an eye which of course is there to try and create mystery. But then you will suddenly cut to another scene where those girls who were camping seem to be being tortured in a locked room. The two don't work together and whilst of course you know they will connect at some point they don't feel connected. Instead all that "Eden Lodge" feels like is a lot of cliches slammed together by someone who in fairness has watched enough horror movies to create a reasonable looking visual.
What this all boils down to is that "Eden Lodge" as a whole is a misfire with a tone which is inconsistent, lots of cliches thrown together and acting which is not always good. But I have to give credit to whoever it was who came up with the opening credit sequence as that was quite impressive.
