grégory levasseur – Horror Ghouls

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/

We start off with a security guard running through a subway station, and upon entering a room and seeing his reflection in a mirror, he starts freaking out and begs for his life. This doesn’t end well, as his reflection takes a shard and cuts its own throat, and the same thing happens to him. Then we move over to the life of Ben Carson (Kiefer Sutherland) who is a suspended police detective on mandatory leave from the New York police department after a shooting that went terribly wrong. Now, he works as a security guard and will start working at the Mayflower, which is a luxury department store that was destroyed by a fire five years earlier. And of course: the building has a vast array of mirrors still standing from when the store was open. How convenient. On his first night of patrol, he notices eerie things like how the mirrors are covered with handprints which seems to be from the other side of the glass. Couldn’t be anything suspicious about that, right? He also finds the wallet of the guard we saw in the opening scene, who he was told had killed himself. Inside the wallet is a note saying “Esseker”. He starts seeing more and more visions, and Ben becomes convinced that the mirrors play a part in what is happening here. And when his sister is also killed by her own reflection, Ben is fueled by rage and fear for his family’s safety, and becomes determined to figure out the mystery behind the mirrors and the mysterious note in the previous guard’s wallet.

Mirrors is a supernatural horror film from 2008, directed by Alexandre Aja (High Tension, Piranha 3D, Crawl). The film is based on a South Korean horror film from 2003 called Into the Mirror, and it was originally supposed to be a straightforward remake until Aja was brought on board to read the script, which he then wanted to change as he was quite dissatisfied with the particulars of the original film’s story. Thus, Mirrors only includes the basic idea involving mirrors. It was shot in Romania, most of it in Nicolae Ceausescu’s unfinished Academy of sciences which is located in Bucharest.

Abandoned places and spooky mirrors is of course a fine setup for a horror movie, merged with a protagonist who is troubled, divorced and having an alcohol problem (funny how those things always go hand in hand) we are left with what will inevitably not bring much new to the table, but at least it will offer some good creepy atmosphere and a mystery that keeps you intrigued enough to keep watching. Another plus is that there’s some really effective scenes, especially that of the sister’s death. If you watch this movie with some of the directors other gorier and grittier movies in mind, however, this one’s very different. There’s none of the really gritty vibe which can be found in High Tension for example, or any abundance of gore like in the incredibly gory Piranha 3D. This one’s a different meal, and Aja’s movies does indeed come in varied forms, you can rarely expect the same thing over and over from him. Which is not a bad thing.

Overall, Mirrors is a nice supernatural horror film where Jack Bauer, uhm, I mean Kiefer Sutherland plays the role as the alcoholic ex-cop pretty well. The best part of the movie is when everything is still a mystery, as the creepy vibe does diminish a bit once the supernatural goings-on are revealed, but this isn’t exactly uncommon in mystery-fueled horror movies. I have also seen the original movie this one was based on, and this is one of the (rare) cases where I actually prefer the re-imagined version. This is probably largely due to this movie being a re-imagination rather than a remake.

A sequel, called Mirrors 2, was released in 2010.

Director: Alexandre Aja
Writers: Alexandre Aja, Grégory Levasseur
Country & year: USA, 2008
Actors: Kiefer Sutherland, Paula Patton, Cameron Boyce, Arika Gluck, Amy Smart, Mary Beth Peil, John Shrapnel, Jason Flemyng, Tim Ahern, Julian Glover
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0790686/

Tag: grégory levasseur

High Tension (2003)

Mirrors (2008)