High Tension (Haute Tension) (2003)

This review is a very special one, as I first wrote it less than a month after I began this blog and it was my first ever entry of Movies That Suck. At the time, I thought my decision to label it as such was controversial, as I was under the impression that it was absolutely lauded, at least in the horror community. In fact, that was where I first really heard about it (Jeff Katz mentioned it briefly in the documentary, Going to Piece: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, which I first saw when it premiered on Starz in the fall of 2006, but for a while, I didn't catch it). I've mentioned before that I was once a member of this horror podcast's message board (if you've been here since the beginning or have read some of the unaltered reviews where I mentioned it, you know what it is) and, if you listened to that show at all, there was no way you wouldn't hear about High Tension. The two hosts absolutely lauded it, with one calling it the best horror film of the 2000's, and many on that board seemed to share his sentiments. It was touted as living up to its name as much as it possibly could, a gory good time, and an awesome directing debut for French filmmaker Alexandre Aja (it wasn't actually his first film but we'll get to that), one he failed to live up to. Hearing so much praise, I was understandably eager to see it for myself and when I did, I was initially game for it, as I thought it was telling a nicely simple, suspenseful, and grisly story. But then came the twist near the end, after which I completely turned on the movie, as I felt lied to. This was what everyone was hyping up? What a crock! And I wasn't shy about expressing my displeasure for it, which wasn't a smart thing to do on that site, as a lot of the people on that forum, especially one of the two hosts, didn't have enough balls to accept when somebody disagreed with them. I got hounded a lot whenever the subject of High Tension came up and I continually told them I didn't like it and explained why as fairly as I could, but to no avail. It was so bad that, when I found I disliked another movie they absolutely loved (i.e. Madman), I lied and said I did like it just to avoid more grief. As I've also mentioned before, I eventually stopped listening to that show for a number of reasons, some of them very personal, and because of those bad feelings, coupled with my honest disdain for it and their annoying love for it, High Tension became a movie I despised to my very core.

Revisiting it for this October Fest was the first time I'd seen it since I wrote the initial version of this review and, I'll be honest, I was open to giving it another chance. Upon re-watching it, I was reminded that it does have a number of positives, like the acting, cinematography, location work, the brutal gore effects, and the music score and sound design. Had this movie kept with its simple, straightforward story, I think it would be remembered better than it is. Having looked it up without that podcast coloring my perception, I can see it actually got mixed reviews when it was released in the U.S. by Lions Gate in 2005 and holds some fairly poor to average scores on sites like Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB. Still, I think it would've been looked back on as a fairly well-done, gruesome French slasher, if nothing amazing. I don't know if it would've been something I would watch frequently, as there are parts that do make me feel kind of unclean and cause my skin to crawl, and I'm not into those French Extreme movies that came out around that time, like Inside and Martyrs, anyway, but I would've at least respected it. But it's that damn twist that sinks it for me, as the whole time I was re-watching it, knowing what it was, I kept thinking, "This doesn't make sense." So, while I can't say I still think High Tension absolutely sucks, the twist is still very problematic and derails everything in more ways than one (if you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about, but for those who haven't, I'm going to keep mum about it until we get to it). It may be one plothole, but it shows how one such misfire can completely ruin a story.

Marie and Alexa, or Alex, are two college friends who travel to the isolated farmhouse where the latter's family lives in the French countryside in order to do some studying. After driving all day, they arrive late at night and Marie is introduced to Alex's father, Daniel, her little brother, Tom, and the family dog, a St. Bernard name Hendrix. While her father goes to continue his work, Alex takes Marie upstairs and points the way to her room, while she speaks with her mother. After Marie gets settled in, she and Alex discuss their plans for the next day and then, she goes outside to have a cigarette. Eventually, she goes back inside and up to her room, where she listens to music on her Walkman while pleasuring herself on the bed. As she does, a menacing truck arrives outside, followed by a constant, impatient ringing of the doorbell. Daniel gets up to answer it and when he does, the truck driver, an enormous man wearing a cap and dirty tan overalls, attacks him with a straight razor, before brutally slaughtering both him and Hendrix. He next attacks Alex's mother when she comes down to investigate, while Marie, having seen the first attack from her window and overhearing the rampage, tries to find a way to call the police, then has to hide when the killer enters her room. The killer abducts and chains up Alex herself and, after killing everybody else he thinks is in the house, including Tom, puts Alex in the back of his truck. Marie sneaks into the back of the truck with a kitchen knife in an attempt to free Alex, but ends up trapped in there as well when the killer closes the back doors and drives off. Now, Marie must find a way to save both herself and Alex from this demented madman.

Though it was the first that brought him international attention, High Tension was not Alexandre Aja's first film as director. Having started out as a child actor in several films made by his father, Alexandre Arcady, he made a short film called Over the Rainbow in the mid-90's, which won an award at Cannes, and then, in 1999, he made his feature debut with Furia, a post-apocalyptic science fiction film. He co-wrote Furia with his childhood friend and frequent collaborator, Gregory Levasseur, and the two of them then constructed High Tension as a tribute to the 70's and 80's horror films they grew up watching. Though the film didn't do much at either the French or U.S. box-office, it won some awards at film festivals and led to Aja's Hollywood career, which began with the 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes. If you saw my review of that, you'd know I'm not a big fan of it, either. As for Aja's other horror films, while I haven't seen Mirrors (or the South Korean film it's a remake of), I do enjoy Piranha 3-D as a cheesy B-movie and, so far, it's actually my favorite movie of his. I also didn't mind Crawl, which came out in 2019, although I'd much rather watch either Lewis Teague's Alligator or even Alligator II: The Mutation.

The two leads, Marie (Cecile de France) and Alex (Maiwenn), are not the most amazing or original protagonists, especially for this type of slasher-esque horror film, but they're fairly well-acted and developed enough to where I can say I kind of like them. Marie is definitely the more memorable of the two, as she's immediately introduced as being rather odd, saying she had a nightmare about chasing herself through a forest. She also has a sardonic jadedness to her when it comes to just

about everything, be it the rural countryside they drive through, which she says would drive her to suicide if she had to live there, and especially men, whom she's often said to be standoffish towards and distrusting of. And there's a reason for that: she clearly has an interest in Alex beyond simple friendship, given how she looks at her when she's seemingly asleep in the passenger seat and when she watches her showering through the house's bathroom window while she's outside, having a smoke. Following that latter moment, she goes back up to her bedroom and listens to music while also pleasuring herself as she lies on the bed, showing that she is quite sexually frustrated. As for Alex, she seems totally oblivious to Marie's interest, as she's actively pursuing a guy who already has a girlfriend, saying someone who's already taken must have something to him. Regardless, she is very close to Marie, with the two of them trading banter and jabs at each other, talking about the time they had when they went to a party the previous week, and Alex even pulling a prank on her where she acts like she's going to leave her on a dirt road in the middle of the night. She also tries to get her to ease up on her attitudes towards men and to remember that their purpose in coming out there in the first place is to study, not party. When the killer shows up, poor Alex is abducted from her bed, chained up, and, after he's finished killing her family, put into the back of his truck. Marie, on the other hand, who was still awake, tries unsuccessfully to find a way to contact the police, hides from the killer when he searches her room, helplessly watches Alex's mother get butchered while hiding inside her bedroom's closet, and tries to free Alex from her chains, only to get locked in the back of the truck. Needless to say, you really grow to root for her as the film goes on and she tries to get the cashier at a gas station to call the police, has to hide again when the cashier is murdered, attempts to call the police herself but gets frustrated with them because they're wasting time with questions, and finally takes the cashier's car and chases after the killer, leading to a bloody confrontation between them.

Sadly, none of Alex's family live that long but you do learn the dynamics. Alex's father, Daniel (Andrei Finti), is a pretty laid back, jokey guy, while her mother (Oana Pellea) can be a bit of a worrywart. According to Daniel, she worried about Alex all day and left her something to eat in the oven, despite Alex having told her not to, saying she didn't know if she would have time to do so. And Tom (Marco Claudiu Pascu), Alex's little brother, definitely loves his big sister, as he waited

up for her while wearing his cowboy costume, which he wanted to show off, and fell asleep in the process. By the time they arrive, Tom is just barely awake but Alex is more than happy to see him and puts him to bed herself. It's noted that Alex and her family are not French themselves, as she tells Marie that they've only been living in France for six months and they haven't mastered the language yet. I have no clue where they're supposed to be from, as Maiwenn herself is French but the actors who play her parents are both Romanian, as that's

where the movie was actually shot. Maybe the family is meant to be Romanian but it's never made clear. In any case, they're clearly very close and loving, which makes their horrific slaughter all the more impactful. And like I said before, even their dog, Hendrix, a big and somewhat protective St. Bernard, doesn't survive the massacre, and is killed right before Daniel meets his end.

Outside of Marie (or, I guess not, given the revelation, but let's not get ahead of ourselves), the most memorable character, by far, is the sick, depraved, and merciless killer (Philippe Nahon) who shows up at the farmhouse that night. We first meet this guy around seven minutes in, as he's sitting in his truck's driver seat and apparently receiving head from a woman while muttering in a deep, gravely voice, "Continuez, continuez, continuez. C'est bien. C'est bien." And then, after he gets off, he starts the engine up, reaches his arm out the window, and drops a woman's severed head on the ground. That tells you everything you need to know immediately. Even as jaded as I am when it comes to horror, I was like, "Oh, God!", the first time I saw that. So, when this guy shows up out of nowhere that night, you know Alex's family is in for it. First off, he's really intimidating in just the way he looks: a big, heavyset guy wearing dirty, tan, wrinkled coveralls, a cap whose brim often obscures the top of his face, and heavy boots which make his footsteps loud and thudding, accompanied by the sound of his coveralls' crinkling leather. While he does later speak, for the most part, he's silent, save for some heavy breathing and grunting. His truck is also more akin to a big, armored van that the Creeper would be proud of, with a back area separated from the front by a wall and wire mesh, as well as a key-chain with a little smiling head wearing a cap akin to his. 

Second, he proves to be just as intelligent as he is sadistic. After he kills Alex's father and slices up her mother, he heads upstairs and enters Marie's room, which appears to be empty. However, he touches the radiator to see if it's been used recently, looks at the bed, goes into the bathroom to see if the sink has been used, checks the medicine cabinet and the shower, goes back into the bedroom, and throws back the cover and mattress to see if anyone is hiding underneath the bed. He

then goes to leave but, feeling that someone may still be hiding in there, walks back in for one last sweep, goes out and closes the door, and listens for a bit for someone to come out of hiding. Later, when he stops at a gas station and Marie hides inside, the killer goes in and makes small-talk with the cashier, Jimmy, whom he's clearly acquainted with. However, he senses that he's hiding something, as well as suspects he's committed murder, and eventually kills Jimmy. He then turns off the lights and music and searches the premises,

including the restrooms, and then drives off with Alex. And when Marie drives after him, only to lose him in a wooded area, he suddenly gets behind her and, before he runs her off the road, shows that he removed the bullets from Jimmy's gun, which she took with her. He then engages her in a game of cat and mouse in the woods, at one point hanging his flashlight up to trick her into thinking he's there, searching for her, allowing him to attack her from behind.

Third, as you already guessed from his introduction, this killer is a totally immoral, inhuman monster who sees young women as a means to satisfy his disgusting sexual urges and everyone else as obstacles to be dealt with. When he shows up at the farmhouse, he wastes no time in attacking everybody he sees. He slices Daniel across the face with a straight razor, his weapon of choice, then decapitates him; he disembowels Hendrix; slashes the mother's throat with the razor,

then proceeds to cut her up, while making some disturbingly satiated and fulfilled sounds; and hunts down poor Tom in the cornfield and shoots him with a shotgun. He later puts an axe in Jimmy's chest, adds all the more to his suffering by using his foot to force it deeper into him, and near the end of the movie, disembowels a driver whom Alex flags down with a concrete saw. As for Alex herself, he abducts her, thoroughly chains her up, and puts her in the back of his truck, planning to

take her off somewhere to have his way with her. Inside his truck, you see that he's done this before, as there are bloody finger-prints and claw-marks all over the walls and ceiling of the back, and he adds a small cutout of Alex's face from a family photo to a small collection he keeps up front. After he leaves the gas station, the killer torments poor Alex further by pouring some of his booze on her through the wire grating, then lights a cigarette and threatens to drop the match on her, before putting it out, chuckling sadistically at her terror. And during

his confrontation with Marie, there's a moment where he gets her on the ground, caresses her bare belly and navel ring with his blade, runs it up her shirt, lightly grazes her around her chin and earlobe, touches her two small earrings, and asks her, "What do you want from Alex? She turns you on? She turns me on too. She turns me on." He proceeds to put his finger down her throat, apparently intending to make her choke, which is when she fights back.

One last person I want to mention is Jimmy (Franck Khalfoun), the unfortunate cashier at the gas station the killer stops at. He's just sitting there, minding his own business, when Marie comes in, tells him to call the police, and hides in the store when the killer walks in. The killer strikes up a conversation with him, mentioning how the store would be a great place to bring women, and how he's sure he gets a lot of fancy women who drop by and ask for his "services." Jimmy, already uncomfortable after Marie asked him to call the police, realizes how serious the situation is when he sees blood on the killer's hand. He's about to reach for the gun he keeps under the counter, when the killer asks for some booze. Jimmy goes into the back of the store to get him a bottle, nods and winks at Marie when he sees her hiding around the corner of an aisle, but then, the killer puts an axe to his chest and makes it even worse by pushing the axe further in with his foot.

I have to give major props to the film's visuals, as it's a very well shot movie, marking the first time Alexandre Aja worked with his frequent cinematographer, Maxime Alexandre. It's interesting, as the movie definitely has a gritty, raw, grindhouse feel to it, accentuated by its extreme content, but at the same time, there's an inherent beauty to many of its visuals, like the shots of the countryside at sunset during the film's first true scene; the sheer blackness of the nighttime exteriors, especially when Marie and Alex are

driving through the cornfields, where it looks and feels like an enormous void is all around them; and the John Carpenter-like, blue moonlight effect you sometimes see, such as in the farmhouse early on and when Marie goes outside for a cigarette. Aja also does some memorable things with the camerawork and the editing, such as shooting Marie walking up to her room for the first time, putting her bags on the bed, looking inside the wardrobe, and going into the bathroom in one long take. Right after cutting from that take, he puts in a

short, false jump-scare where Marie opens the medicine cabinet and, when she closes it, Alex is reflected in the mirror, playfully startling her. When the killer arrives and begins his rampage, the shot of him attacking Alex's father from outside the front door is from Marie's POV looking out her bedroom window, and when he brings the razor down on him, Marie backs away from the window in shock. Suddenly, the camera goes from her and, in a sped up, kinetic manner, travels all the way

downstairs to the foyer where Daniel recoils from getting sliced and the killer lets himself in. Similarly, his decapitating Daniel is shot from above for maximum splatter effect, and when Alex's mother comes downstairs and sees the killer, he's photographed standing in the center of a halo created by his truck's headlights from outside the open front door. There's another memorable shot of Marie standing in almost total darkness when she watches the killer carry Alex out of the house. And

there are some instances that can be described as Hitchcockian, like when Marie is hiding in a closet and sees the killer come in and murder Alex's mother through the wooden slats, and in the gas station, when you see the killer walking through the store and Marie trying to hide from him. In a similar vein, the sequence where she hides in the men's restroom, only for the killer to walk in there after checking all the stalls in the women's, is like Hitchcock both in the suspense and the surprise comic relief, as you realize that the killer simply went in there to relieve himself at a urinal.

Even though it takes place in France, the film was shot in Romania, with the only "studio" work done in Bucharest for the scenes between the girls in the back of the killer's truck... and said studio was actually just a garage. Also, Aja has said that the farmhouse was four different locations that were made to look like one through the art direction by Gregory Levasseur himself and editing. That's very impressive and I would've never guessed that was the case, as it just feels like a typical, quaint farmhouse out in the countryside, a place where, as

Marie comments, there's not much for them to do aside from focusing on their studies. While it's not completely ancient, as it is shown to have portable phones, electric heating, a bug zapper, a computer in Daniel's office, and at least one TV set, there really isn't that much for a person to preoccupy themself with, except maybe enjoy the scenery and sit on a swing-set in the front yard. It also has an atmosphere about it that's both peaceful and serene, but also kind of eerie, due to how quiet it is at

night, save for the sound of insects, bird-calls, and gusts of wind. And it definitely makes for a good location for a suspenseful story due to how isolated it is in the middle of the French countryside, surrounded by nothing but cornfields for miles, and how claustrophobic its interiors are. It's such a great setting that Aja and Levasseur initially intended for the entire story to be set there, but that proved unfeasible.

Another memorable location is the small, innocuous, and rather nice-looking gas station the killer stops at. Besides its location being another example of how isolated this place is, as it also looks like it's sitting in a black void, it's the setting for another game of cat and mouse between the killer and Marie. After Marie continually runs and crouches throughout the store, hides in the aisles to avoid the killer, and witnesses Jimmy's murder, she finds herself locked in when he turns out the lights and switches off the music, forcing her to run and

take cover in the restroom, which itself is memorable for the blue, neon signs on the wall pointing the way to either the men or the women's (as well as because they're much more pleasant than typical gas station restrooms). And then, you have the setting for the climax, a secluded road in the middle of the deep, dark woods. The final confrontation between Marie and the killer is set in this one spot filled with old, abandoned greenhouses whose plastic sheets are ripped up and hanging in large shreds, which play a major part in the fight. The same also goes for a fence post which Marie rips up out of the ground and wraps its end in barbwire, making for a very painful weapon that she takes right to the killer's face!

If you're a gorehound, you will not be disappointed by High Tension, as the makeup and gore effects, created by frequent Lucio Fulci collaborator Giannetto De Rossi, are very realistic and gloriously savage. You see some of his work right from the start: the back of a person wearing a hospital gown, with nasty bruises, cuts, and stitches running up the length of it, followed by Marie's dream of walking through the forest, with a badly bleeding wound in her side. But you really start to see the gruesome goods in the killer's introductory

scene, where he drops the woman's severed head on the ground and drives off, leaving it there. When the camera pans down to it after he drives away, it is shocking how realistic it is. Shortly after that, we get the killer's rampage in the farmhouse, which is where the filmmakers and De Rossi really let it rip. After the killer slices Alex's father across the face with the straight razor, then guts Hendrix, he forces his head into the staircase railing with his foot, clears everything off a table, and pushes the table into his head, decapitating him and spraying

blood all over the floor. I won't lie, the first time I saw that, it actually shocked me just how brutal it is, and the same goes for the death of the mother. While the killer's initial attack on her happens offscreen, when Marie is hiding in her bedroom closet, she staggers in with cuts on her face and blood around her nightgown's neckline. The killer then comes in behind her and slices her throat open with the razor. Marie watches as blood sprays out her neck, and after she collapses out of sight, the

killer mutilates her body. Though you don't actually see it, save for blood spraying on the closet doors, the sound of it is very sickening, and the sounds the killer himself makes, like he's getting off on it, are, again, disquieting, to say the least, especially since the blood spray feels like a substitution for some other fluid (God, just writing that made me feel as depraved as him). When Marie emerges from the closet once the killer leaves, you see the mother's savaged body, made

worse by how she isn't quite dead yet and tries to speak. She holds her left arm up to reveal he severed her hand, which is found lying on the floor next to the portable phone. While little Tom's death is the least explicit, as he's just shot, you still see his body lying in the cornfield after the killer drives off with Alex and Marie.

The carnage continues after the massacre at the farmhouse, as the killer then murders Jimmy, the gas station cashier. Not only does he put an axe into his chest, but when Jimmy falls forward onto the floor, the killer puts his foot on his back and pushes, forcing the blade further into him. Later, during the climax, when Marie is forced off the road and climbs out of the wrecked car, she has a bleeding head wound and a really bad cut on her left arm, which she's forced to bandage up with a cloth she finds in one of the greenhouses. After the

killer gets her down on the ground and softly runs his razor along her neck, you see just how badly hurt she is. But she manages to inflict some pain on him as well. First, she smashes him in the side of the cranium, giving him a bleeding head wound, then takes the fence post wrapped in barbwire and smashes him in the face and body with it repeatedly, leaving him a bloody, scarred mess. After that, there's still more carnage, as Marie gets sliced across her right cheek and stabbed in the gut,

and then, the killer, his face all cut up and brandishing a concrete saw, chases after Alex, who flags down a passing motorist and tries to escape with him. Putting the saw through the windshield, the killer slices the motorist right through the middle, splattering blood all over Alex and the inside of the car. Even the camera lens gets coated with blood, and I've read that when that camera was used on another movie, it actually oozed blood at one point! Alex manages to escape the car, only to find a big shard of glass sticking in her foot, which she then pulls out (I hate that kind of stuff), and finally, Marie, who's just as covered in blood as Alex, gets a crowbar through her right shoulder. Ouch!

Another thing the film has going for it is that, for about 3/4 of its running time, it's straightforward, fast-paced, and to the point. It immediately establishes the protagonists and the killer, and just a little over twenty minutes in, he arrives at the farmhouse and the carnage begins. On top of the brutal gore, we also get a plethora of suspense on Marie and Alex's part. Having seen the killer attack Alex's father from her bedroom window, Marie listens as he finishes him off downstairs and ducks

back into her room when she hears the mother getting attacked. Spotting an old phone on top of a dresser, she tries to find a spot to connect it to a line. Thinking one is behind the wardrobe, she attempts to move it, but it's so heavy that she can only budge it by a few inches. She then hears the killer open the door at the bottom of the stairs leading up to her room and quickly works to make it look as if no one is staying in there. She moves the wardrobe back, puts the phone back where she

found it, puts her shoes and Walkman into her bag and hides it under her bed, makes her bed up, and even goes into the bathroom and cleans up the sink. That leads into the sequence where the killer enters the room, searches every bit of it for any sign of someone hiding (there are a number of low angle shots of him holding his straight razor that make me think of Michael Myers with the scalpel in Halloween II), while Marie hides under the bed. Once he leaves Marie's room and goes back downstairs, he enters Alex's room, fiddles with her

hair as she sleeps, then puts the razor to her throat and shushes her when she awakens with a start. Back upstairs, Marie hears Alex struggling and screaming in the killer's grasp, and, again, attempts to make use of the phone. But while she does move the wardrobe away from the wall, she finds only a TV plug outlet back there.

With no other recourse, Marie creeps downstairs, hearing the killer and Alex yelling and struggling. She takes the chance and runs to the parents' bedroom across the way. She finds a charger for a portable phone, but the phone itself is missing. She searches frantically for it, when the sound of some banging in the hallway prompts her to hide in the closet. Alex's mother enters the room, crawling on her hands and knees, and snatches the phone from its hiding place. But, before she can make a call,

she hears the killer's footsteps approaching. Unable to do anything, he comes in, slices her neck open, and then butchers her, all while Marie watches from inside the closet. Horrified by what she just witnessed, she comes out of the closet once the killer's gone and grabs the phone off the floor, but finds it doesn't work. She then hears a loud bang outside and looks out the door to see Tom, still in his cowboy outfit, running for it down the hall, with the killer walking after him. While he's

distracted, Marie heads to Alex's bedroom and finds her sitting on the bed, chained up and gagged. Marie does what she can to try to unchain her and remove the gag but is unsuccessful. The two of them hear the sound of Tom yelling for his mother outside and Marie runs to the window to see him rush into the cornfield. She also sees the horrifying sight of the killer opening the back of his truck and removing a shotgun, before following Tom into the field. The boy tries to escape by crawling through the field but, after only a few seconds of being

hunted, a loud gunshot rings out through the night. Another shot is heard and Marie rushes to the hysterical Alex, trying to comfort her, as well as asking where she can find a phone. Because of the gag and her overwhelming fear and grief, Alex isn't much help, so Marie runs downstairs to try to find a phone down in the kitchen. The killer returns to the house and heads back upstairs, while Marie does find a phone, only to then see that the killer cut the line. She hears the sound of Alex screaming upstairs, accompanied by the killer's heavy

footsteps, and watches from the shadows as he carries her outside and puts her in the back of his truck. Marie searches for a weapon in the kitchen, but the noise she makes attracts the killer's attention and he heads back inside. Marie grabs a butcher knife and escapes outside, as the killer searches the house once more. She creeps around the side of the house, reaches a window, waits for the killer to leave that room, then quickly makes her way around the house and back to the van.

The killer goes into the living room, takes a family photo with Alex in it, and after stroking her image through the glass, breaks it and uses his razor to cut out and remove the image of her head. At the same time, Marie rushes to the back of the truck, climbs in, and tries to help Alex once more. The killer comes out of the house and walks around to the back of the truck himself. Marie sits on her knees, waiting for the opportunity to stab him with her knife, only for him to slam the double-doors shut

and put a padlock on them. He gets in, starts the engine, and drives off, as the camera pans over to an overhead shot of the cornfield to show Tom lying dead on the ground, a gunshot in his back. Both of the parents' brutalized corpses are also shown, reflecting on the carnage that just befell this innocent family, while the killer drives onto the main road and turns on the radio, like it's another Friday night for him. In the back, Marie tries to use the knife to file her way through the door, but has

to shush Alex, who's still hysterical, fearing she might attract the killer's attention. Alex also sees the disturbing signs that the killer has abducted other women like this before, but Marie tells her that, unlike them, she's not alone. After a little more driving and attempting to file through the door, Marie manages to pop open the lock, when the killer pulls into the gas station. While he fills up his tank, Marie sees where they are, as well as that someone is inside the station. Giving Alex the knife for protection, she climbs out the back,

silently makes her way around to the side of the truck, and slowly heads towards the station. There's another Hitchcockian moment where it cuts back and forth from her making her way to the building to a closeup of the scrolling numbers on the pump and the clanking they make. Suddenly, the clanking stops with a loud thud. Marie looks back and then rushes to the building in slow motion, while the killer puts the hose back up and walks towards the building himself. Marie makes it through the door, ducks down under the window, and when the

cashier, Jimmy, asks her what's going on, she tells him to call the police. Seeing that the killer is coming, she runs down the aisle and hides, leading to the suspenseful scene where he makes small-talk with Jimmy while browsing the store, as Marie continues having to hide. Once Jimmy realizes the man is a murderer by the blood on his hand, he goes for the gun under the counter, only for him to suddenly touch his other hand and ask how much he owes him. This leads into Jimmy going to get some booze for him, only to get an axe to the chest.

Once Jimmy's dead, the killer puts up the "CLOSED" sign on the door and turns off the lights and music. Marie goes into the back and tries to escape out the doors there, but they're locked. She's forced to take cover in the restrooms while the killer, now wielding the axe he used to kill Jimmy, walks into the back of the store as well. Eventually, he heads down to the restrooms and checks all the stalls in the women's side, before making his way to the men's, where Marie is

hiding. Seeing the lights turn on and hearing his footsteps, she's sure she's done for, when she hears him put the axe down, followed by the sound of urinating. She peeks out to see him relieving himself at a urinal, then he flushes and walks out with the axe. Once he's gone, she comes out of the stall she was hiding in and slowly walks down the length of the bathroom, peering inside each stall to make sure he's not waiting in there for her. Finally convinced he's gone, she goes to one of the sinks

and uses the water to wash off some sweat. (Aja has said that this whole sequence is a tribute to the similar one in William Lustig's Maniac, right down to the camera panning down with Marie as she puts her head in the sink and back up when she looks in the mirror. Unlike in Maniac, though, the killer is not reflected behind Marie when she stands up.) She then hears the truck start up and rushes back into the station to see it drive away. She heads behind the counter, calls the police, and when they pick up, she tells them what happened and that

she's at a gas station. The man asks which gas station but she's unable to find its name anywhere. She's also not able to give them the truck's license plate number and the officer says that, without it, the man will be near impossible to find. She gets frustrated and curses out the officer, yelling about how the killer is going to get away with Alex, and slams the phone down. She then grabs Jimmy's gun from under the counter and, finding his car keys, races down the road to try to catch up with the killer.

Eventually, she does, only for him to turn off the main road and head down a dirt path leading into the woods. To avoid attracting attention after having stayed fairly far behind him, Marie drives by the turnoff, then turns off her headlights, goes in reverse, and heads down the dirt road herself. But after several minutes of tailing him, the killer's truck disappears into the darkness. Marie drives on, wondering where he went, when the truck's front suddenly appears in the car's rear-view mirror. He

rams into the car from behind and Marie grabs the gun, only for the killer to reach out through his window, holding a bullet. Marie opens the pistol's barrel and sees it's empty, while the killer opens his hand and drops all of the bullets onto the ground. He chuckles evilly, then hits the gas and rams into the car again. Marie puts the pedal to the metal, trying to outrun him, but it's hopeless, as he easily catches up to her and rams her again and again. He forces her off the road and she goes down into the

woods, unable to stop. The car hits something that flings it up into the air and it lands on its top. The killer comes back around and stops his car on the side of the road, while Marie, badly injured and bleeding, crawls out and staggers into the woods, making for the old, abandoned greenhouses nearby. Inside one, she bandages up her bleeding arm, when she sees the beam of the killer's flashlight and crawls to hide among the shredded, plastic sheets. While he searches for her, she spies the

fence post with the barbwire and rips it out of the ground and wraps the wire around its one end. Brandishing this brutal weapon, she heads for the source of the light amid the plastic, but when she finds it, she sees that the flashlight is merely hanging from a strap. Just as she realizes she's been tricked, the killer grabs her from behind, throwing some of the plastic across her face and pulling it taut as she struggles. She soon appears to pass out and he drops her to the ground, which is when he has his sadistic fun, attempting to suffocate her by

putting his finger down her throat. But she fights back, hitting him in the side of the head with a rock, dazing him and causing him to drop his razor, and gets up and puts the club's barbwire right into his face. She then brutally beats him with it, knocking him to the ground, and proceeds to smash his face and body with it again and again and again, until it's a bloody mess underneath the plastic covering it. She lifts up the plastic and leans in to hear if he's still breathing, but just when she's

satisfied that he's dead, he reaches up and grabs her by the neck. She, in turn, uses the plastic to suffocate him and holds it tight until he finally stops grabbing for her and his arms fall limp. Finally sure he's dead, she throws her back and lets out a maddened and exasperated scream.

And then it happens: a twist that totally derails everything and caused my jaw to hit the floor the first time I saw it. The police arrive at the gas station, discover Jimmy's corpse, and while running back the security camera footage, the one cop sees Marie murder Jimmy. Yep, Marie is actually the killer and the man we've been following is just a creation of her mind to explain away her crimes. Just to confirm it, when she finally "rescues" Alex, she pulls the knife on Marie and accuses her of murdering her family. Going

back to what I said about the movie being briefly mentioned in Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, it's when the subject of April Fool's Day and its own twist ending comes up. Jeff Katz, mentioning how a number of people feel that ending is a cheat, says, "I'm gonna get in trouble with the Haute Tension filmmakers. That's a cheat, okay?" For a long while, I didn't even know what he was talking about, as nothing from High Tension was shown to punctuate what he was saying, and he was also using the French title. But then, one

time, it just clicked and I thought to myself, "Oh, yeah, that is much more of a cheat than April Fool's Day." (I actually rather like April Fool's Day, but that's for another day). That was also the best way to describe how I felt at the time: cheated, betrayed, lied to, and so on. I've seen a lot of really bad twists in movies and, most of the time, they don't bother me. This, however, was on a whole other level in how much it made no sense and ruined the entire movie for me. Seriously, watching

this brutal cat-and-mouse game between Marie and the killer, as she does everything she can to save her friend, while coming close to nearly getting caught herself, and then finally manages to brutalize him like he did Alex's family, only to then learn she is the killer, is infuriating, to say the least.

Now, to be fair to the filmmakers, there are hints that there's something off about Marie from the get-go, given her cynical attitude and view on things, as well as the dream she says she had where she was chasing after herself. Also, when she goes outside for a smoke and watches the farmhouse while sitting on the swing, the music that plays there is subtle but rather unsettling, and at one point, she watches Alex showering through the bathroom window, both alluding to her homosexual interests and hinting at something more perverse

her. Also, the killer is shown driving towards the house when she starts pleasuring herself and arrives when she finishes, a hint that he's the embodiment of her sexual frustration and desires. The shotgun he uses to kill Tom is first seen above the fireplace when Marie walks by the living room window. And like in some other horror films, both Marie and the killer's reflections in mirrors are often focused on, which isn't the case for any of the other characters. But that doesn't change how, when you watch the movie back knowing the twist,

a number of things make no sense. For instance, if the killer only exists in Marie's mind, then what was that first scene with him watching the farmhouse in his van while giving himself fellatio with a severed head? And how is he seeing the house when Marie herself hasn't even arrived there. On his audio commentary with Gregory Levasseur, Alexandre Aja says the narrative is Marie telling her account of what happened while in a mental hospital, meaning it's all unreliable because she's

insane. Now, I can go with that. Sure, how she knew the guy was watching the house wasn't explained in the context of thing but, since she's clearly nuts, I would've let it slide. And while I used to argue that it's never made clear in the opening that she is telling this to someone, I now see that, at the very beginning, when she's rocking back and forth, repeating, "I won't let anyone come between us anymore," there's an out of focus camera in front of her and she asks if it's recording. I'd argue they could've made it a little clearer but still, I was wrong when I said they didn't do it at all.

But it's the revelation herself that's so very problematic. If Marie is the one relating this series of events, why would the security footage outing her be part of her story? Wouldn't that also make her realize that she's the killer and that man doesn't exist? Aja explains in his commentary that this is a real scene and not part of the flashback, to which I'm like, "What?!" So suddenly, we're not in Marie's mind anymore but instead in reality for a few minutes?! And then, in the next scene, we're back in her mind?! Or I guess not, since we see

Alex accuse her of killing her family, before stabbing her in the gut and then running off but still, when is it made clear that all of this is suddenly "real"? How the hell are we supposed to know?! Also, when Alex runs away from Marie, why does the film start switching back and forth between her and the imaginary killer chasing Alex? How does Marie explain that in her recollection? And where did that truck come from if the killer doesn't exist? (Roger Ebert had a funny quote about it: "The movie's plot has a hole that is

not only large enough to drive a truck through, but, in fact, does have a truck driven right through it.") Moreover, the killer pulls the concrete saw out of the truck, too, and that's used to menace Alex and kill her would-be savior, so where did that come from? Again, to be fair to Aja, I've heard that he's stated in interviews that the way the movie ends as it is isn't how he originally intended it. I don't know if he means he didn't want the twist to begin with, which I've sometimes heard, or if he's referring to

how I've read that the original screenplay played out, which was by revealing Marie to be the killer only after she'd finished her story. It would then be revealed that she's handcuffed in an asylum and we'd now see the security footage of Jimmy's murder. While it would still be really disappointing to learn that she is the killer and everything we just saw was from her diseased mind, at least it wouldn't have created so many continuity problems. But hearing Aja attempting to defend these choices in that commentary feels like he's just making excuses, which is annoying.

Finally, I have to simply ask what the point of this twist was in the first place. I'm sure Aja and Levasseur didn't want the movie to be labeled as just a slasher movie and decided to add this psychological bent but, as I've said, it would've turned out just fine and would likely be thought of more fondly if they'd stayed the simple course they were on. Even if they'd stuck with the original screenplay's ending, it still would've been frustrating to suddenly learn that everything we'd seen for nearly 90 minutes had been a lie and that

this person we were rooting for was the actual killer. Speaking of which, it's equally disappointing to learn that this disturbing and creepy villain is nothing more than a figment of Marie's imagination, and a very detailed one, at that, given the depths of his depravity and everything we see in his truck, some of which suggests he's done this before. I would ask if he is indeed meant to be the embodiment of Marie's own depraved urges and if she herself has murdered and abducted people before, but the context of it all is made so confusing by the climax that, at this point, I don't care.

Getting back to the movie's good points, another is the music score by Francois-Eudes Chanfrault, who went on to work with Aja again on The Hills Have Eyes. It's effectively tense and nightmarish, while also sounding very unusual and experimental. The main theme, which you first hear over the opening credits, is a great example of how unsettling and foreboding it can be, sounding somewhat innocent, childish, and even fairy tale-like, but with a definite feeling of disturbing horror to it. This music is also used for other appropriate moments, like when Marie first tries to help Alex while Tom runs off into the cornfield, the small montage of the carnage the killer left behind at the farmhouse, and the revelation that Marie is the killer. It also has a number of instances where the music sounds akin to sound effects, like when you see the severed head the killer was using to pleasure himself, an almost broiling-like sound when Marie is smoking outside the farmhouse, and a memorably constant, electronic tapping sound that plays when Marie is desperately trying to figure out what to do during the killer's rampage. There's also a deep, menacing string bit after Alex's father has been killed that reminds me of what you would hear in Steve Jablonsky's horror movie scores, specifically for the Platinum Dunes Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies.

The soundtrack also has a handful of noteworthy songs, some of which are actually tied to the story in a way. The first song you hear, Sara Perche Ti Amo, a nice, energetic little Latin song the girls listen to while driving in the car, is kind of indicative of the carefree time they're having, which is about to become nightmarish once they reach the farmhouse. The second song, I Believe, you hear when night has fallen and Marie is the one driving. It sounds like an American country song and it's clearly a love song, too, which is quite significant in that it plays when Marie looks longingly at Alex while she's asleep in the passenger's seat. Even more significantly, when Marie pleasures herself in her room, she listens to a song called Runaway Girl, which, with lyrics like, "Just another girl/That's what you are/Just another girl," definitely alludes to her sexual frustration and desire for companionship. The scenes with Marie and Alex in the back of the killer's truck and Marie hiding in the gas station from the killer are set almost entirely to music playing on the radio; with the former, it's A toutes les filles, and the latter has Pillow Talk, both of which disturbingly clash with what's happening onscreen. Finally, there's New Born by Muse, which plays when Marie commandeers Jimmy's car and chases after the killer, as well as at the very end and over the ending credits. Both times, it can be seen as alluding to the determined mindset Marie has towards Alex, only in very different contexts.

After it was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in September of 2003, Lions Gate bought the rights to High Tension and had enough faith in it to spend $14 million to give it an American theatrical release (it didn't pay off at all). They had to make a number of cuts to the violence in order to secure an R-rating, leading to about a minute's worth of footage being removed, though the version you get on home video from them is the uncut version. And they also created an English dub version, though it's not a 100% dub, as there are still many instances of French language dialogue with subtitles. Specifically, Alex and her family are dubbed, and so is Marie when she's speaking with them (Cecile de France did her own dubbing), but whenever she or other French-speaking characters talk, subtitles are used. There is another English dub I found where all of the characters are dubbed and the violence is left totally intact, which could either be a Canadian dub or an international one (it's where I got all the screenshots from, as it was the best quality source for the uncut version I could find). I thought it might've been the version that was released in England as Switchblade Romance but it used the original High Tension title. Though the dubbing in the Lions Gate release isn't bad, if you're at all interested in watching the film, I would suggest seeking out the original French language version.

Because of its twist, High Tension remains a very divisive film. Some are able to look past the twist and enjoy it as a whole, while others are like me and feel that it ruins it completely. I hate that, too, because it has so much going for it: it's well-made and shot, the acting is good all-around, the characters are very memorable, especially Marie and the sadistic villain, the makeup and gore effects are absolutely brutal and realistic, the locations are used effectively, the music score and soundtrack are well done, there's a lot of suspenseful scenes and setpieces, and it wastes no time in getting to the point and virtually never stops from the moment the killer arrives at the farmhouse. Because of all these good points, and also because I'm not as exasperated about it as I used to be, I decided to remove the Movies That Suck tag from it, but that doesn't change how much the twist completely derails all that good will. While it wasn't entirely out of left field, it still kills any replay value it might've had and also infuriates you after getting you so enraptured in the story and cheering for Marie to save Alex. Again, there are some who enjoy having the rug pulled out from under them like that, but while I do like a good twist, that's just it: this twist sucks. If you like it, power to you, but now that I've updated this review after planning to for some time, I don't see myself ever revisiting High Tension again.