The Reeds

Not so much a film as another painfully lacklustre reminder of the uninspired state in which the once-great UK horror scene is currently languishing. The first two failings of this excursion into lukewarm waters are casting a Craig David lookalike with the acting ability of a four year old, and casting an actor who is best known for his long standing roles in the cursed training grounds of Hollyoaks and Two Pints. Not a good move to miscast your lead roles with these two. The third is leaning way too heavily on location for effect, which quite clearly highlights the lack of effort put into the plot and script. The Fens are actually a very original and genuinely creepy setting for a horror film; just not this one. Acting talent from the female cast members doesn't offer much either, and britflick regular Geoff Bell hamming his part up to the hilt only adds to the comical side of things. Overall a vague mess of a movie. Triangle did more or less the same story, but a little better. My advice to budding UK horror writers is to aim for something different. Seriously people... Nobody cares anymore about photogenic city types getting into trouble in the countryside.

I stumbled across this recently on Lovefilm and it seemed an interesting idea. The cast is pretty natural and includes the always watchable Will Mellor. The characters are thankfully quite likable which is rare for a horror movie and makes you care more about what happens to them.

The setting on the Norfolk broads is stunning and quite eerie which is of a huge benefit to the film. It's certainly not a place you'd want to be stranded.

This isn't an out and out horror more of a ghost story but there is a nice air of tension built up throughout and some creepy scenes. You will probably guess what's going on from a long way out but it's handled so well it doesn't really matter.

For a film with a very modest budget this is an impressive effort and I found it very enjoyable.

To be honest, the movie at first really doesn't seem like a bad one at all. The first few minutes are nothing too great but at least it makes you think that its going to head into something decent and watchable, if only a tad bit formulaic. But as it turned out in the end, the movie was just an incredibly bad one.

The movie is just very poorly done. It's an extremely bad handled horror-film, that tries to go into many different directions but none of them ever work out for one bit.

A problem already lies with its concept. Seriously, what is so scary about the reeds in this movie, even though all of the characters try to make it seem like it's one of the scariest places to be in and they constantly get a bad feeling about things, just by driving a boat, at clear day. The movie its 'horror' really relies on its concept and settings, which were already incredibly lacking to begin with.

But the biggest problem of the movie simply is the story itself. The movie is given a whole bunch of side-plots, which makes the movie as a whole all the more messy and confusing. And the movie already gets an incredibly messy and confusing one to begin with, during its second half. First of all, the movie is so incredibly dark that you can hardly tell what's going on, on screen and who's where and most importantly why. And second of all, lots of stuff just doesn't make sense. Like mentioned earlier, the movie combines lots of different horror elements, in an attempt to keep things interesting and also surprising but instead it makes things incredibly messy. You see people constantly running and looking scared, a ghostly figure appears, a strange sound can be heard but there is actually very little happening in the movie. It's not a boring one, the movie is too fast going for that but there is nevertheless not a whole lot happening in this movie.

No way that this movie will please any horror fans, despite the fact that it still has basically all of the right ingredient in it, to make a decent, watchable horror film out of. The execution of it all is however far too poor and lacking for any of the horror to ever work out. The atmosphere is too dark, since you can't even tell what is happening, there is no gore, no effective scare moments and no real originality to it all, though the movie tries really hard to be. horror fans should simply stay away from this, as should everybody else.

A failed attempt.

3/10

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If you can get past the thick accents (this is a British flick), THE REEDS is not half-bad. A group of young people are on a boating cruise, and end up running afoul of some less-than-pleasant locals. Plotwise, we're in WRONG TURN territory, only on water instead of solid ground. The gore is minimal, although the suspense builds pretty well. Very low budget, so don't expect anything out of the ordinary. As I recall, this film was running back to back or concurrently on another channel with PRIMEVAL, the Aussie or New Zealand flick about a killer croc. I have to say in all honesty that I prefer PRIMEVAL. But why not watch them both and decide for yourself.

A horror that looks like high-grade 1980s output, which made it spooky and nostalgic in equal measure - the 16mm explains the nostalgic bit.

On the positive, the young main characters are attractive - I dug Laura (magazine girl Anna Brewster) and her Kate Moss delivery - very London - and the set up is nicely done, hinting at yikesy things to come, which they do.

On the negative side, I wasn't really sure about the movie's central message, but I did like the hook - yes, there is a comparison to Triangle definitely, but this is different again.

I'd say that this is not a wide theatrical release type movie but that it's pretty good and quite creepy watching it late at night within the comfort of your own home. Most of the acting makes it feel very natural, very real, and you can (if you shut your eyes and click your heels three times) almost imagine yourself there in amongst those razor-sharp greeny reeds wondering where everyone else is...