I’ve tried to end it many times … but they’re not having any of it.
Main Cast: Anna Brewster, O.T. Fagbenle
Director: Nick Cohen
Each year there are movies produced that are never seen by the public. Their content is considered too graphic, too disturbing, too shocking for general audiences. This is one of those films.
Group of pretty young people on a boat in the middle of nowhere, partying, drinking, dancing. What could go wrong? Laura and her friends, Chris (Will Mellor) and Joe (Daniel Caltagirone) and their girlfriends Helen (Scarlett Johnson) and Mel (Emma Catherwood), and newcomer Nick (O.T. Fagbenle), they rent a boat for a weekend on the water–among the reeds, in the middle of nowhere–until they get lost, then get impaled on a length of metal sticking up from the muck, and from that moment on the gang is picked off one by one by someone or something in the reeds.
The story practically writes itself.
Only in this case, writer Chris Baker knows the secret to any successful horror movie is a good backstory, which he provides in typical ghostly British fashion. And while the backstory isn’t executed well–shoddy dialogue and just a bit of over-acting–I think it was well-conceived, and I saw its potential. While I think THE REEDS could have been better with a little more time and care put into it, a little more shaping in the final product, it’s effective enough for what it is, which isn’t quite a slasher flick, and isn’t quite a ghost story, but a darn good meld of the two–better than a lot of other similar types of movies I’ve seen.
Anna Brewster steals the show as Laura, but O.T. Fagbenle’s Nick gives her a run for her money. They both have excellent screen presence. The rest of the cast do what they can with the roles they’re handed, but it’s obvious from the get-go they might as well have been named Victim #1, #2, and so on. Meanwhile, the location is a character in its own right. The sense of isolation director Nick Cohen is able to extract from the repetitive shots of the boat being completely surrounded by the reeds, and how small the boat is in relation to the area in general, works to heighten the already tense situation, especially once Chris is impaled and Laura, who has some medical training (natch) warns against moving him in case the spike is keeping him from bleeding out. How the hell are they gonna get the boat out of here and back to civilization without taking Chris off the spike? After all, there’s no cell signal here (natch), and they can’t very well WALK to a phone.
The danger only escalates from there once people start appearing out of the reeds–and this is where things got really interesting, because in the end the danger was not from the direction Baker and Cohen lead us to believe, although when the true villain shows up, we spot him immediately. Only then it’s a matter of figuring out how the specters fit into things, and just what the hell is really going on.
Like I said, THE REEDS is a good story. It definitely held my interest. And while I guarantee some will balk at the ending, I think it works. For me, I think anything less, anything easier, would have undermined the previous 85 minutes. This isn’t just a story about a group of friends being picked off one by one, it’s a story about redemption, damnation, and closure, and the ending plays off that very well. While a few bits were a little too cheesed up for me, overall THE REEDS was a pretty good horror experience, and while not entirely original in what it attempted to pull off, it was still more ambitious, and more enjoyable, than anything else I’ve seen recently (with the exception of LAKE MUNGO).
Read more 8 Films to Die For reviews
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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