While loyal acolytes obsess over the possibility Hammer Horror's golden age might be resurrected, Nick Cohen's The Reeds is one of a small number of UK genre pictures in recent years with an approach you could far better think of as actually 'British'. This has its pros and cons; The Reeds is far too often ramshackle, charmingly amateurish and questionably coherent. But it's also ambitious, thoughtful stuff, parts of it are beautifully put together, and it makes for ninety minutes of fairly effective if undemanding scruffy, lo-fi horror.
Its main hook is its location, shot out in the Norfolk wilderness. On paper it seems like a British Deliverance - a group of reckless, fun-loving city folk on a boating holiday, out to get drunk and patronise the cretinous locals but finding themselves trailed by snarling things lurking in the fens. They're all conveniently paired off, nice girl with nice guy, lager lout with bubbly extrovert and so on, clearly ready for the cracks to start showing once night falls and the monsters turn up.
Initial impressions aren't great. The group banter tends towards predictable back-and-forth chatter and the scene-setting relies a little too often on culture clash clichés that teeter on the edge of annoyingly camp. The location has a cold, eerie beauty, but a lot of people are probably going to wonder why anyone would want to spend five minutes there, let alone a weekend, and the film doesn't bother justifying it at any length.
Yet The Reeds is clearly trying very hard to be more than disposable Friday night entertainment. The leads are stereotypes, but all of them prove surprisingly likeable. This is more down to the solid cast than the fairly unremarkable script - everyone proves able to internalise more than enough to be worth empathising with, even when they're hurling angry platitudes at each other.
Visually The Reeds is somewhat uneven, but cinematographers Dennis Madden and Sam Goldie manage some occasional genuinely fantastic imagery. Cohen's direction is competent rather than distinctive, though given the shoot was apparently a logistical nightmare (electricals and several feet of water don't mix) he probably ought to be cut some slack. Still, several long shots of the boat lost in the swamp are visibly much more polished than the more intimate closeups, and it's no surprise most of the underwater action sequences were done in a tank. Nonetheless the chill, bleached colour palette lends everything a compellingly foreboding feel that makes up for a lot of the technical shortcomings.
Perhaps most significantly, this is another low-key horror feature plainly nursing ambitions beyond presenting a parade of disposable bodies ground to mincemeat one by one. Firstly, what violence there is (and there is a fair amount) is fairly punchy stuff - not as explicit as some recent genre entries but often genuinely shocking. The performances help here, too, with two pivotal moments in particular kept gut-churningly compelling by some credibly natural reactions.
Secondly, it isn't spoiling much to say yes, there is more to the plot than the trials of a group of naïve urbanites menaced by the unimaginable horrors that lie in wait outside civilisation. Chris Baker's script makes some laudable stabs at obfuscating what's really going on and throwing a little moral ambiguity into the mix. Some people will probably pick up ahead of time on where the story is actually headed, but it's inventive enough to hold their attention regardless. The villain of the piece is by far the weakest character, but still manages to evoke a measure of sympathy.
Unfortunately, much of this is all for nothing given how much havoc has evidently been wreaked in the editing room. Though available on VOD, additional footage is apparently still being shot, and certainly the biggest weakness in Cohen's film is it plays as if it's not quite finished.
While the gist of the plot is perfectly understandable, the way the film's been pieced together is nowhere near as coherent. The Reeds hinges on a genre trope that requires a good deal of attention to detail or a clear sense of the director's vision for it to work effectively, and once the Big Reveal is out in the open it becomes apparent Cohen doesn't really seem to have completely grasped how to do either of these things. It isn't a bad film by any stretch of the imagination, but the technical inconsistencies and cheery pragmatism mean it's impossible not to pick holes in the twist. It's rushed, heavy-handed, makes questionable sense and the epilogue in particular reeks of someone trying to be needlessly edgy.
Horror devotees should probably still
investigate The Reeds. Despite its flaws, it's an entertaining piece
of work which deserves some attention for the effort that's gone into
it, and it has moments where it's genuinely emotive, thrilling genre
cinema. But in their hurry to rush it out of the door after so long
in gestation the people involved have clearly lost their grip on the
film they set out to make, to the point it's frustratingly short of
being anything great and only comes cautiously recommended.
(The Reeds was screened as part of Manchester's Grimm Up North 2010.)