User Reviews

Well, this one sets things up as you might expect. We see someone setting up traps in a river with surrounding land containing reeds. A group of London adults wish to unwind on the river with the reeds, and they are looking for a pub. Before even leaving, their boat has suspicious looking brats who are rude and silent, not moving as our cast demands. They hire the boat from Mr. Croker who, at first, doesn't seem to have one available, only to steer them to the one with the kids inside. Once the kids remove themselves, our cast head off on the river, and soon come across a path that all of us viewers scream at the screen in unison, "Noooooo, don't take the path! Don't go over there!" But, they take the path and come across a metal spike which breaks through their boat and into antagonistic Chris(Will Mellor), the bloke whose temper is short and bark loud. Chris' chances of survival are slim as any movement would cause him to gusher as the stake is completely through his stomach. Even worse is the fact that they are located in the middle of nowhere. Joe(Daniel Caltagirone), operating the boat, searches for help as those kids run about, finding them around a fire as another mysterious presence, with a shotgun, pursues them. Meanwhile, a gasoline canister and a flare gun end up igniting a fire on board the boat, an explosion, two dead bodies, Helen(Scarlett Alice Johnson)is burned badly, Nick(OT Fagbenle)twists his ankle while seeking out a boat he sees from a distance, and the kids continue running free as if someone is chasing after them. We soon discover that something is off as characters see themselves with darkened eyes, the killer is in two different places at the same time, Laura(Anna Brewster)witnesses a horrifying crime involving the kids being blown away by the shotgun-toting killer in a slicker, with Nick finding Croker, hoping to go for help. Laura also watches in horror as Joe and his girlfriend Helen wind up in a most unfortunate fate. Laura's significance in the plot, regarding her being found as a child, raised as an orphan, is important as it pertains to unraveling the odd goings-on and she will need to finish a deed long overdue as it concerns the killer.

Really, "The Reeds" has a weird structure. We all know, I imagine, pretty easily who the killer is..it's just too obvious. And, we can see that there are specters loose, and that a crime has been buried away, but the haunting remains..restless spirits desiring payback. This movie has one of those loopy time paradoxes where a terrible event continues in a cycle seemingly never to end unless someone is able to break it..the only witness to a crime is the one who must disrupt the ongoing cycle. But, and this is what induced my eye-rolling..the filmmakers couldn't allow for this to happen, as we must always have a twist which pulls the rug out from under us. One cycle begets another and all that jazz. The structure of this movie, which constantly sends us around in circles, is a bit of a mess and eventually I was tired of it all. Maybe others will find this kind of movie a refreshing spin on the whole "six young adults take a boating trip, meeting their doom at the hands of a psycho in a slicker, with few places to run, caught in a place unknown to them", instead of irksome as I did. One direction the movie didn't go in, I was figuring it would, was setting up the kids as possible threats to the adults of "The Reeds", instead they contribute in a different fashion. I did find the underwater cages containing the skeletal remains of victims rather effective. I also thought the setting was perfect for a thriller..too bad, the filmmakers had to go and craft such a convoluted, puzzling scenario to complicate matters.

"The reeds" is a UK horror movie that goes for a rather typical genre approach. 2 couples and a single girl (handy... she's medically trained) go out for a boating trip in the reeds. Boats are sold out, they get some other boat which they have to pick up somewhere in the nowhere and they keep meeting some strange teenagers. Honestly I thought it would go for some kind of Eden Lake thing with the kids acting pretty dysfunctional but unfortunately it didn't. Boat gets lost, cellphones and radio don't work (they never do, do they?), people start acting totally idiotic and the boat gets impaled by a spike (realistically while slowly moving). From here on things get mysterious and most of it play in the dark night or foggy morning reeds with the teenagers re-appearing every now and then, some strange dreams and flashbacks inserted and pretty soon you know that this is just another ghost movie.

Problem is that the director obviously didn't quite know where to go... loads of things happen that don't make any sense in the bigger context and are never explained (for example a dog keeps re-appearing and the kids have fun barbecuing several animals... why? Don't even bother to ask. The whole explanation of the ghosts appearing and the lame parallels with the main actor make little sense as well. Its all just random and mysterious and to top it off the movie ends with another thing dropped in that turns the mess upside down again and dropped my rating by 3 points. The actors are quite interesting, the setting could have guaranteed for some eerie atmosphere and chills but they dropped their chances with the ridiculously convoluted plot. Ignore!

The Reed's tells the story of six friends who plan a weekend boating trip through the Norfolk Broads but soon find themselves caught in the middle of the struggle between an old man and the very teenage life's he took many years ago. The spirits of the murdered teen's now haunt the old man and anyone who steps foot on the Corsair Star boat. I want to start off by saying that so far this is my favorite out of the latest batch of After Dark films. As most people know I love movies dealing with ghosts and the paranormal but unfortunately a lot of them are just done horribly. That is not the case with The Reeds which is a beautiful example of a movie based around a haunting. The acting in this film is very solid and the special effects are beautiful all of which appear to of been practical effects no CGI that I could spot so if it was in there it was done well and unnoticeable. The story really blew me away its hard for me to review this one without giving up important parts of the movie because I just loved the story so much and the way it progressed at a very nice steady pace ending in a very satisfying way. The plot twists were executed perfectly. The Reeds does an excellent job of building tension and unlike a lot of today's horror it also delivers at the end. It didn't feel rushed or like they weren't sure how to end it like a lot today's movies seem to be plagued with it was done very well and really left you with a wow feeling as you finish piecing together what you just witnessed. If you enjoy a good haunting movie with a strong storyline beautiful blood and gore where needed all rolled up in a neat package of pure horror enjoyment I highly recommend you pick up a copy of The Reeds. 8/10

B+ effort for director Cohen who I haven't seen over here before. The leads are pretty likable and the movie looks nice in a theater: expansive without the expensive: it's got some production value in there somewhere.

As for story/plot, it certainly keeps you guessing, although perhaps I'd have preferred a few less red herrings and, like the other reviewer, I wanted more direction on whether this was going psychological, supernatural or simply natural. It sits somewhere in between the first two IMHO.

I haven't seen all the other Horrorfest offerings this year but know people who have: I suspect this is at the intelligent (British?!?) end of After Dark's offering and it's certainly got enough nasty bits to keep horror fans - including yours truly - happy.

Yup - worth the price of a theater ticket, maybe even the popcorn.

A fairly generic group of interchangeable douche bags go on a boat trip that, obviously this being a horror film, doesn't go exactly as planned. Their ship gets trapped and they're terrorized by people who may or may not be ghosts. The movies lame, unscary, and charts an extremely familiar course. The characters are pretty much cardboard cut-outs that you don't really care if they live or die. An awful entry into the '8 films to die for' made all the worse because I saw the best of the bunch ("Mungo Lake") right before this bottom feeder. And to make matters worse it has an ending that makes the whole film moot anyways so don't even bother to watch it in the first place.

My Grade: D-

DVD Extras: Ads for EpixHD.com & Fear.Net; and Promo trailers for "After Dark: Horrerfest 4", "8 Films to Die for 3", "After Dark Originals", and trailers for "Saw 6" & this film

I'd say this film is more of a puzzling suspense film than a horror flick. It's a rather intelligently-written film, but it still didn't completely wow me. Again, the typical handful of young adults, this time in the setting of taking a boat through some reedy marsh-like area of the UK. For a long time, the entire movie feels like a jigsaw puzzle. We're shown glimpses of the whole, but we still can only guess what they all fit together to finally mean.

Is it a basic madman slasher thing? Are they being haunted by ghosts? Dopplegangers? Ah, it's some weird temporal flux thing...but still, that only explains a piece of the overall mystery. Who's the guy in the hood with the gun? What's his beef exactly? This movie will do a good job for a lot of people to unsettle them because the audience keeps having to ask these questions. And as we're calmly asking questions, our main protagonists are panicking here and there at what they don't understand. So much of the suffering and death comes from this really wonderful plot device: when you experience something you don't understand, the worse part of you wants to panic. When you panic, you're prone to make bad decisions. When you make bad decisions, bad things happen and people get hurt. The fact that so many of our main characters just screwed themselves over because of this speaks to me of relatively smarter storywriting.

However, this film isn't without its flaws. I said a lot of people would be unsettled by the nature of this film's storyline, but not me. Again, it felt more like a mystery movie than a horror flick, and the climax, while it still puts together enough of the pieces to satisfy us, didn't leave me feeling like much was really resolved. There's no real denouement, especially as we are led to believe with the final scene that the couple who "escaped" get caught back at the beginning of the entire temporal loop that messed them all up in the first place. Give a try, though; you might enjoy it.

A group of young holiday makers rent a boat in the Norfolk Broads and end up encountering unfriendly locals (who sacrifice a dog), and being hunted by a hooded man with a gun, in this low budget Brit horror film which got its US premiere at After Dark Horrorfest 4 in 2010. When their boat runs aground one of them gets impaled on a piece of metal which thrusts through the bottom causing him to complain that he "feels like a f##kin kebab." The others discover a nasty populace of skeletons caged and chained to the river floor beneath them, and soon start meeting grotesque deaths aswell as experiencing hallucinations, and encountering a ghostly gang of kids (a neat nod to MR James The Lost Hearts especially given the location), as they discover that there is something dark and nasty living in the reeds. The film has a decent set up, is well acted thanks to a good cast which includes Will Mellor, Anna Brewster, and OT Fagbenle, and is pretty atmospheric thanks to good location shooting on the actual Norfolk Broads. Director Nick Cohen not only took advantage of the scenery, but also recruited a whole host of local residents ax extras and in key roles. However, with its mixture of supernatural and real world elements, one too may red herrings, and asking more questions than it answers, the plot is a muddled affair that ultimately leads The Reeds becoming just a leaky vessel in the end.