Jack O’Connell’s three favourite movie performances: “That is untouchable”
There are some horror films that are what you might call ‘obvious’. The jump scare ones, the gory ones, the franchises based around a national event like Halloween, the ones where a guy wears some kind of mask and holds an implement that could do some significant damage to college kids making increasingly poor choices.
But then there are horror movies that get inside your mind and sit there, occasionally popping into your brain and making you think, “Oh yeah, I watched that once. That was horrible”. Well, 2008’s Eden Lake starring Jack O’Connell alongside Michael Fassbender and Kelly Reilly is one of those horror movies.
The reason it’s so horrible is that not only is it based around a ‘good time gone bad’ the likes of which occur in real life somewhere every hour of the day, but also that it is just unremittingly bleak. There’s no happy ending, there’s no sense of redemption, it’s just a violent, bloody, scary tale of a couple taking a nice romantic break and things going very, very badly for them indeed. O’Connell is brilliant in it; so effective is his performance that it only takes him being on screen for a few minutes and a few lines for you to absolutely despise him and wish him a suitable comeuppance.
He plays the utterly psychotic ringleader of a gang of what were known back then as ‘hoodies’, terrorising Fassbender and Reilly’s characters, who, to be fair, are doing nothing more than trying to have a relaxing time camping for a couple of days. Once Fassbender makes the mistake of saying something innocuous to the teens along the lines of “Just leave us alone, ok?” all bets are off. And boy, they are off in unrelenting fashion. Even when some of the boys start to think the violence is getting a little out of hand, O’Connell forces them to carry on no matter what.
Despite causing some controversy on release due to some believing it demonised the working classes (rather than reflecting the fact that young men in groups are very capable of doing absolutely insane stuff), Eden Lake has a reputation among horror fans as being the kind of film you only watch once, and that’s understandable. It’s anxiety-inducing, gory, unsettling and will inevitably make you uneasy if you ever do decide to do anything as foolish as go camping.
Perhaps the reason O’Connell is so convincing in the film is due to the toughness of his upbringing outside of movies. In and out of courts due to transgressions involving violence and alcohol, he found himself with a young offender’s referral order – but somehow fought against the derailment of his early life to enrol in some free drama classes.
He managed to land a part in Shane Meadows’ acclaimed skinhead drama This is England after Meadows came to a drama workshop and spotted him, and a succession of TV roles followed before star turns in films like Michael Caine’s Harry Brown and the Angelina Jolie-directed Unbroken really pushed him into Hollywood’s gaze. But it’s arguable that he was never quite so effective, so downright loathsome as in Eden Lake.
Most recently, he appeared in Sinners, the critically acclaimed horror that sees Michael B Jordan team up again with director Ryan Coogler in a steamy 1930s supernatural nightmare. Once more, O’Connell excels as a villain – this is not a man who does comedy – and when one listens to his acting influences the signs are clear as to where he might take some cues.
Asked by Hollywood Authentic which famous movie roles he might have liked to have taken on, he revealed: “The first one that’s coming to my head is American Psycho and Patrick Bateman. I just think that what Christian Bale did with that is untouchable. And Jud in Kes. Sid in Sid and Nancy. That’d be the top three there.”
Next up for O’Connell is some big-budget monster-bashing in Godzilla x Kong: Supernova, a sequel to last year’s Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. And honestly, given a choice between which we’d rather face, O’Connell’s character in Eden Lake or Godzilla? We’d plump for the massive lizard. Far less terrifying.
