MovieChat Forums > Eden Lake (2008) Discussion > Why are the youths all portrayed as psyc...

Why are the youths all portrayed as psychopaths?

posted 10 years ago by galford264
12 replies | jump to latest

Out of this entire group there is not one except perhaps the Thomas Turgoose character towards the end who is shown as likeable in any way. Even the female is vile. It shows a couple of them who seem to be having some semblance of a conscience or some human empathy, like a few times the black kid looked like he was about to say enough is enough I can't take it that far but no they all just carry on and don't seem put off enough to leave after cutting up and burning people.

This is extremely unlikely to be the case, surely? That they would ALL be led astray by the one psychopathic kid? It's as if the film implies they are all used to torturing people in this way and they just look a bit shocked because it's gone a little bit further than normal. It seems very unlikely that a whole group of youths/kids would see this stuff as no big deal like the way they did.

[–] MariaLoathesDTWig 10 years ago

Please read this.Some kids can be cold-blooded monsters : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger

And to answer your question,the only psycho was Brett.Sure,the others were no piknick either but it's quite obvious that they had no desire of harming Steve and later on,Jenny and Adam.They were bullies & delinquants sure,but murdering someone? It's going way too far even for them.The only reason they went for it is because they were terrified of Brett.He was obviously the leader or the queen bee of the gang and they were only the little helpers.I don't know,maybe a few of them were trying to impress Brett but overall,they were all too scared to stand up against him.

http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000005/thread/231484369?p=1

[–] galford264 10 years ago

Yes I know about the Bulger case, but these things tend very rarely to happen and usually involve one or two kids, not whole groups of them. I don't buy the idea that because they were terrified of the leader they stood by and didn't do anything. What was to stop them running off and leaving him? He couldn't have chased them all down. Instead they take part, albeit reluctantly, in cutting them up with knives and burning that other kid alive? Plus it seems like they are aware of what this leader does, it hints that he has done this kind of thing before possibly to animals, yet they are all still happily friends with him. I'm sure most kids of that age would stop hanging around with someone like that as soon as they realized his psychopathic tendencies.

I mean it's not like the guy robbed a milkman or smoked a bit of weed, he is killing and torturing people. Surely youths of that age would realize that's not normal and stop hanging out with him?

[–] psychocosmic-1 10 years ago

not that simple! They lived as neighbours. Maybe they have lived close for all theyre lives? Where would the kids go? They have probably been influenced by that psycho kid Brett all the time.

Honestly! If the kids were wearing vampirefangs, nobody here would care of plausability and logic. Can´t we just letting things go and let ourselves be scared? Its a horrorfilm about a young psychopath and its consequences. And it scared us (most of us at least!) at that should be good enough for a B horrorfilm.

[–] Smurgledorf 10 years ago

I think you're overrating the competence of the director and writer. It's quite easy to figure out how they WANTED the film to come across, but they don't appear to have succeeded in what they were attempting to achieve.

Movies aren't reality. If your audience simply can't accept character behavior as plausible it's a problem with the screenplay. If the intent was to evoke real-life murders like James Bulger, the film should have used a more Ken Loach-style social realist approach instead of having everything feel like it was out of a glossy american horror film. I think for this film to work, they needed to make the kids protagonists as well so their actions would have had more context.

[–] CptHowdy87 10 years ago

I don't think you paid much attention to the movie...

[–] FlyingSaucersAreReal 9 years ago

There was also a case in the US in which a teenage girl was tortured to death over days in someone's basement. Sylvia Likens. In that case an adult was involved, though.

Yes, those situations are rare. It takes a certain combination of people and the situation for something like that to be able to happen.

Summer of Death! https://dyersstuff.wordpress.com

[–] Eve_of_Destruction 9 years ago

That is so awful and now they are free to roam around??

[–] Kaliyugaforkix 9 years ago

The kids were weaklings and they turned to bad boy Bratt for some kind of guidance as their parents/elders did with his chav daddy, it was generational degeneracy; babies raising babies. Spineless twerps looking to assert themselves in the bluntest, dumbest way and Bratt was the rabid dog who obliged them. A win win in other words! Their folks couldn't raise them so they fell into the exact same dead end that their elders went through. Not *my* kids!...Endless circles in hell. Alone they were pathetic but together...they were super pathetic
DUrrrrrrrrrrr

Its a hateful, context-free flick but it still reinforced for me that soo many people shouldn't breed, no matter their class. Its selfish to transmit your damage to the next generation but then it takes awareness to recognize that as a factor in the first place. The sins of the father, man- not just another cool sounding catchphrase

[–] raf-33 9 years ago

It's called a gang, you nipple! Do biker gangs ever have someone riding a Segway? Is there one Tibetan monk somewhere in the Islamic State who just felt like giving jihad a try?

Birds of a feather flock together! If homework-loving Hank had tried to get in to Brett's clique he would likely have had his homework rammed up his gravy lane.

Ya Kirk-loving Spocksucker!

[–] rikajessie 9 years ago

The only one that seemed really evil to me was Brett. The others looked uncomfortable in many scenes and were pushed/threatened by Brett to hurt the couple. I just wished that had stood up to him/not done what he wanted. Though, we see what he did to Adam(I think that was his name, the boy he burned), so I can see why they were scared of him. Then you see what the adults in their lives were like.

I didn't see anyone but Brett taking pleasure out of the tortures, but they did nothing to stop Brett, and did help him capture them so I was mad at them for that.

[–] wakedemons3 9 years ago

Man, you read that one wrong. Do you have Asperger's? Or one of those spectrum disorders that makes it difficult to judge human emotion? NONE of the teens were psycho except Brett. Throughout the entire film, they are shown doing evil things only because he intimidated them into it and peer pressured them. They are shown to hesitate and even vomit at their own actions.

Are you not entertained?!

[–] vampbang 9 years ago

Most of the teens want to belong to a group, in this case they made a bad choice to follow the leader, which to me is the real killer, the rest of the kids were just insecure about themselves and in some way they were drawn by this psycho mind, they fell in a game of manipulation, serial killers are very dangerous characters even at that age, and that teen clearly is a serial killer, he enjoyed to hear when the father killed Jenny and he enjoyed that most of his "friends" were dead too...