Maybe it's my American intellect, but I figured all of England look like London. Turns out there are lots of spooky marshes there, as well. The one thing I’ll say about The Reeds is, well it had actual planty like reeds. As for the movie itself, it’s a muddy boggy creek. In other words, a complete mess.
The Reeds had me flashbacking to another British horror flick on a boat called Donkey Punch. Yuppie Brits all piled on a boat to get their drugs and sex on and horror hilarity ensues. I figured The Reeds would go with the same scenario when it sets up a group of young Britons on a party boat.
After renting the boat the “Corsair Star," mysterious sightings appear in the reeds. This leads to predictable accidents with our passengers as one gets impaled and others die by proxy. Somehow we are supposed to believe the mysterious inhabitants of the reeds are the cause, but my own interpretation is they were killed by stupidity.
The movie trudges along as exposition and plot get regurgitated so you know what’s the what. The first half felt Sixth Sense meets The Ruins. The second half went all High Tension as our survivors were chased by a hooded man with a shotgun. We are led to care about the final girl Laura but my only care as I watched for 90 min was for this movie to end so I could watch SportsCenter.
The movie has a few decent effects but in the end it was a disaster. Sometimes when you add two flavors together, supernatural revenge and survival horror it comes out awesome. In this case, all you’re left with is some muddy water and some ugly plants. That’s what I call The Reeds.
