High Tension is the title and high tension is what you get.
We’re in the countryside in France (here, of course, filmed in Romania) where the two young best friends Marie (Cécile de France) and Alex (Maïwenn) are visiting Alex’ parents to study. It all seems like a quiet and idyllic summer in the country, but who’d know that a psycho killer (Philippe Nahon) is also roaming the area? He’s dressed like a mechanic, drives around in a rusty van and likes to chill out between the killing-sprees by giving himself a blowjob with a fresh severed head. Welcome to surfing on the first red wave of French Extreme Horror.
After this short and intense foreshadowing, it’s just a matter of time before this cold-blooded and emotionless serial killer drops by Alex’ family’s farmhouse to expand his kill count. And so he does. Already the first night when all have gone to bed, the doorbell rings. As soon as Alex’ dad opens, he gets his face sliced by a razor blade. Then our killer cuts his head off in some very creative way I won’t even try to describe. He slaughters the whole family like they were pigs, even the dog. Before he leaves the messy and gruesome murder scene, he captures Alex, ties her up, tosses her back in the van. Phew. Marie was able to hide during this brutal home invasion, but chases the killer to save Alex.
What we have next is an intense cat n’ mouse chase that spirals completely out of control. Alexandre Aja (with his co-writer Grégory Levasseur) has during the last twenty years established themselves in the US with The Hills Have Eyes, Piranha 3D, Mirrors, Crawl, Horns and more. He was 22 years old when he made High Tension, and with this being his first horror film, one would guess he’d already made genre films for a decade. A solidly made slasher, a gory, relentless ride from start to finish, with strong performances by the two female lead actors. The throwbacks to the 70s and 80s are also eminent and the juicy special effects are a big factor here, delivered by FX artist Giannetto De Rossi (1941-2021) who also worked with Lucio Fulci.
But the film also has a rotten macaron in the room that has to be addressed, and that’s the infamous twist which only M. Night Shyamalan would still be impressed by. Aja took inspiration from the Dean R. Koontz’ novel Intensity, which also became an obscure movie made for TV in 1997. And what he had planned for High Tension was all another than the ending we got here. We can blame none other than Luc Besson, one of the producers, who demanded the twist that has aged like milk. But since Aja already here has proven to be a damn good director and able to keep the tension high to the end credits, it does not ruin the the overall film experience.
Director: Alexandre Aja
Writers: Alexandre Aja, Grégory Levasseur
Original title: Haute tension
Also known as: Switchblade Romance (UK)
Country & year: France/Romania, 2003
Actors: Cécile de France, Maïwenn, Philippe Nahon, Franck Khalfoun, Andrei Finti, Oana Pellea, Marco Claudiu Pascu, Jean-Claude de Goros, Bogdan Uritescu, Gabriel Spahiu
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338095/
