Wet Ghosts

The problem with boating through dense reeds (like a marsh, only with pointier stuff growing) isn’t the loss of your sense of direction or the ghost kids who live in there. It’s that boats have a tendency to involuntarily leak when it runs into, say, an iron cage with a skeleton in it.

Six British friends out for a weekend float, get lost in the reeds looking for a pub. It’s starting to rain, it’s getting dark, and the radio won’t work. An attempt to navigate the shallow waters results in an iron spike being driven into the boat’s hull — and into the stomach hull of one of the passengers. His fiancé is freaking out because the ring isn’t paid for yet.

Seeing a blazing fire in the middle of the wetlands, one of the guys swims towards it, only to find a bunch of teenagers who don’t talk, but are roasting wild dogs and water rats for dinner. I’m not familiar with English dining practices, but what does one season a wild dog with — flea salt?

What follows is a super gnarly chain of events, resulting in massive blood loss, boat loss, and skin loss. Freakier still is another boat quietly floating by. That in itself isn’t unusual. But that it’s the same exact boat with the same name, is. Through the rain and the dark and the gooning out, one of the passengers sees himself on the other vessel, looking back at him. That’d be enough for me to pollute the water.

The marina operator shows up in a dinghy and takes one guy back with the promise of getting help. He’s a rat-eating liar. All he really wants to do is chase down the kids and shoot ’em in the head, face and chest. He’s a good shot, too; Nary a wasted bullet. If the movie ended right there it’d be pretty cool. But leaping into supernatural territory, the past overlays the present, and the reason for the bodies in the underwater cages and the face-blasted kids who don’t really seem to die is a blind-sided punch.

 The boat shop owner is shown committing suicide, over and over. At first if you don’t succeed. And the kids are shotgunned, over and over. Something’s gotta give. As fate would have it, one of the girls on the boat is related to the mystery — and it’s a doozy. (Is that how you spell doozy? I couldn’t find it on dictionary.com.)

The Reeds (2010) doesn’t exactly make it clear on how the boat guy ties into the kids, but it’s a firm thrill all the same. Still can’t imagine why anyone would want to go boating in the reeds, which have the scenic appeal of unmown lawns. Must be a British thing.