The Super Network

3/5

The first thing which comes to mind about this film is, extremely annoying. I don’t think I have felt this annoyed by a film since the remake of Funny Games. Both for pretty much the same reasons, and I will explain why in this review. But first off I will tell you what this little horror film is about. A young couple (played by Michael Fassbender and Kelly Reilly) decide to go on a weekend get away, however their good time gets put in jeopardy when a group of mostly teens start to harass them, and things only get from bad to worse.

For me it sounded like a good premise, couple getting terrorised in the middle of no where essentially. In this case they are out in the (surprise) woods, where there is a nice lake (where the title comes from). But what really annoyed me about all this, was the teens themselves. They hardly seemed that threatening at all, and I could no buy that they managed to do what they did to this couple so easily. Michael Fassbender’s character was a bit of a coward to start with, but he slowly grows balls, but apparently not enough. He is much bigger then these kids, and he is quite well built (the shirtless scenes were very nice thank you), he could easily have taken them on, even in their numbers. These kids are what I believe are called ‘chavs’ over in the UK, and we have these types here in Australia too, I see them all the time, and they hardly seem threatening. In my personal experience when they start to cause trouble, raising your voice and pulling and evil face seems to shut them up. But in this film, they were like this unstoppable force, and it was just too silly to buy into. I had this very same problem with Funny Games, I had a hard time these two skinny boys could terrorise the family so easily. I guess being in a threatening situation, you might act differently then you think you would. But in this film, a slap across the face probably would have got rid of these kids.

On the acting side everyone was rather solid in their roles, there wasn’t a bad performance amongst any of the characters including the kids. Kelly Reilly I thought was excellent as Jenny, she’s beautiful and very much a likable character. I hated seeing anything bad happen to her, and her character at least tried at times to fight back. When she does it has some horrible consequences. Michael Fassbender had a bit of a douche character to play, but he did well anyway, he’s a good actor. They made for a believable couple, however his character Steve was not as likable. All the kids were just horrible, they were so easy to hate. I got excited to see Thomas Turgoose (from This Is England) in the opening credits, however he is really under used. I would liked to have seen more of him then the others to be honest, however they still did their job.The parents were also just hideous characters but played quite well, above all else the characters were just infuriating with how awful they were.

The look of the film is also a strong point, the washed out look really suits the film, especially when things really get rough. The setting was perfect for what they were going for, I certainly wouldn’t want to be lost in those woods. Although I would take on those teens if I knew where I was, but these woods definitely had that lost and frightening feel to them. I thought they did a great job showing this small town, and a rather unfriendly one at that. Perhaps they were unfriendly to outsiders, but it felt cold to me, which was affective. This film did have something I really like with horror films, an ending which does not end on the note you might expect. I got to give it props for having the guts to go down that route. It isn’t an easy film to recommend, there are better ones out there to see, but you can certainly do worse.