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The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Retreat is one of those rare instances, of a film that is slow moving, with a simple story, but strangely fascinating. Films like this are completely reliant on the cast and most times simply don't work, but for some reason, I was really into Retreat and had to know if it was going to end the way I thought it would. As I said, the story isn't that unique, as it features a young couple, who try to reconnect on a secluded island off the cost of England. The island is a rich persons retreat and features one large cottage, that is occupied by one couple at a time. Martin and Kate think that it will be the perfect spot to reconnect, after the recent loss of a child, but the ideal retreat, soon becomes a hell on earth. A member of the army, a man named Jack (Jamie Bell) shows up in bad shape. When he wakes up, Jack informs the couple that a virus has taken hold over the mainland and if they leave the cottage, they could catch it. At first the couple goes along with Jack, but as his behavior becomes more irrational, the couple starts to question weather or not he's actually telling the truth. When you break the film down, it's three people in a cottage on an island, which doesn't sound very interesting, and the only reason this film works is Jamie Bell. The young star who got his start in Billy Elliott almost 15 years ago, has become a modern day Da Vinci in Hollywood, as he is seemingly everywhere and takes on all kinds of roles. Bell is as much an enigma as this film, as the last film I saw him in was some comedy, that was so bad I turned it off. A few months later, he's in this film and outshines everyone. If it wasn't for Bell's character and the fascination in finding out, what's in his head, this a film that would have gone nowhere. Jamie Bell is the key and really does give one of his best performances. Looking back and thinking about this film, it really wasn't anything special, except for one actor who makes all the difference. If you're into great performances, then Retreat is for you, but if you're more into the story then you might want to skip this one.

Picture this: you're on a lone island, when out-of-the-blue a bloodied, exhausted, armed uniformed man appears. He says he needs to BOARD UP your whole house because there is a world-wide airborne plague that's killing everyone. So this virus… is it a foot long then? Perhaps he'd mistaken the virus for a large winged badger. It must be the largest virus ever found on Earth, about one hundred trillion billion times bigger than all the others combined, because it is evidently so enormous that it's incapable of passing through 3-inch gaps. So OBVIOUSLY the soldier must be lying. Right? Certainly you'd expect an educated couple – a journalist and an architect – to be at least half-way acquainted with Contagion 101 and Biology For Total Dummies to immediately question this stranger: "Oy, you: how the bloody heck do you expect to prevent an airborne virus from spreading by boarding up windows and doors? We breathe that bloody air, don't we? And as long as we have fresh air in the house that means some of that contaminated air is passing through. It's not as if only uncontaminated air molecules can slip through those openings… You bloody silly liar."Then again, I forget: journalists aren't the brightest cookies on this planet. They'd believe anything (just as they hope that we'd believe any old crap they write down). But if we eliminate the dummy journalist (Thandie), we're still left with the question how an architect (Murphy) could possibly be this clueless. Perhaps being metrosexual hampers his judgment? Dunno, just a wild guess.Due to the badger-sized flying-virus premise, from the start I didn't know what to make of this story. I had two clear-cut options/explanations: either there is a real plague out there but the movie's writers were too daft not to realize that airborne sickness can't be contained by simply nailing pieces of wood on windows, OR the soldier is lying which means we are dealing with a very dumb married couple. It's a no-win situation: either I have to contend with a poor script or with moronic characters. The common denominator of these two outcomes is certainly bad writing. Hence I knew something dumb was afoot.The other problem here is the typical movie-la-la-land conspiratorial the-army-is-out-to-get-us premise: a British soldier is used for biological experiments without his knowledge! Now, while some conspiracy-obsessed left-wing morons out there might consider this as a plausible scenario (because they hate democracies and consider every Western military institution to be some kind of devious, evil organization of the kind we see in computer games for daft 8 year-olds), I personally have grave doubts. First of all, in the UK there is plenty of money to be made by volunteering as guinea-pigs for medical testing. I have personally met several UK residents (all in their early 20s) who had done this, making an extra buck (as much as 100 pounds for a day's work) by spending a day or two, or a whole week in a variety of medical institutions. I.e. the UK military, if it really needed/wanted human test-subjects that badly, would easily find volunteers. There would be no need at all to conduct these tests on unwilling or unaware subjects, which would only pose potentially grave PR problems should this information be leaked to the media. (And unlike Marxist societies - which those same conspiracy-worshiping, gullible left-wing putzes so worship from afar in their comfy Capitalist-made sofas - in democratic countries such blatant and inhumane misuse of power does make it to the media very often.) Not to mention the laughable notion that the military would actually ALLOW someone to escape that easily from such an installation: all the way to a lone island even! If such human guinea-pigs existed in Britain, they'd be kept behind 5 sets of 10-meters thick steel walls and guarded around the clock by dozens of heavily-armed men. Now THERE'S a place from which even a molecule of air could not escape undetected.The only sensible and useful thing the writer/director could have done would have been to show Thandie Newton in the nude. That's the only potential I see in this script, and with this cast. The rest is baloney.

This movie is been one of the best in its genre, I don't want to spoil anything to you, so all I'll say, it's that if you enjoy the movies that let you with your mouth open but without wondering what the hell happened, this is a perfect movie for you, I mean, you won't know what the hell until the very end, but you will know, it's not like those movies that let you that sensation like you didn't catch half of the plot, if you pay attention to all the details you will get all the answers at the end, the acting was terrific, I'm a huge fan of Cillian Murphy and he didn't let me down, was good to watch him as a normal nice guy for a change, and Thandie Newton and Jamie Bell were outstanding also, I think that what it makes this movie so enjoyable it's the fact that the main characters were normal human beings reacting as regular people would react in such situation, there were no Rambos who knew how to handle SMGs, and fight and build bombs, anyway… to me it's totally worth it and I recommend it 100%.

I'm not sure how I was recommended this movie as the movie came out in 2008 and we just viewed it in 2012!! And I agree, what's with the low IMDb score, we thought it was excellent!! Too many 10 year old's voting these days? Probably. Well I was very impressed by 1) cinematography and especially the island shots - just a beautiful paradise that the couple returns to for a holiday. And 2) the acting! Thandie Newton is so good in everything she does and Cillian Murphy I've seen from Batman series but couldn't take my eyes off him! As the story goes the tension builds and build, and when Jamie Bell shows up and starts talking contagious fatal world wide virus... what to do? Is he telling the truth, a 1/2 truth? I thought it had nothing in common with Dead Calm. I liked this much better. Much better fleshed out characters and you just really couldn't figure out what was going to happen which I really thought was a breath of fresh air. Movie is recommended if you are looking for a good night of suspense!