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Cécile De France stars in the twisted High Tension.
This one is gory, friends. And it is not the fake, multi-colored blood of Evil Dead 2 or the supernatural bleeding walls of Amityville Horror; this stuff looks real. At the same time, High Tension has some psychological twists that make the film new and different. In fact, High Tension might be seen as a really gory version of a Hitchcock thriller. Immediately after watching it, I felt like I may have experienced what it was like to see Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 1974, a more innocent time.
High Tension is a serious and somewhat successful attempt to make a fresh and original horror film. It builds on horror film history — not stealing from it, but standing on its own two feet. The horror genre is a tough place to be innovative, and uniqueness is important. High Tension, in the vein of Saw and The Ring, overcomes the stagnation of the horror genre by inventing new psychological twists, creating an original, interesting, simple, and to some degree cool baddie, as well as establishing a strong lead character.
All of this with little or no computer graphics.
High Tension is the story of two college girls who arrive for a holiday at the secluded home of the one of them, Alex (Maïwenn Le Besco), to spend some time with her family and study for exams. Once settled in for the night, the slaughter begins when a frightening, shadowy figure, Le tueur (Philippe Nahon), approaches the home seeking his next victim. Much of the film is a cat and mouse game between the second girl, Marie (Cécile De France) and Le tueur. The movie is packed with genuine tension and suspense as Marie evades him while the killer brutalizes Alex and butchers the rest of the family.
De France is great in her role of a strong, sexy, and smart lead female character reminiscent of Ripley from the Aliens series. She’s badass and rocks, but is human too. Le tueur is great as well; he comes off as very human (he’s no Freddy Krueger or Michael Meyers), but still insane slasher character made more interesting by his simplicity and real world potential. Le tueur has dynasty potential like his predecessors: Freddy, Jason, and Michael.
The blood in High Tension is extreme but not unreal. In fact, the film has a sense of realty that makes the “twist” near the end seem appropriate, truly surprising and shocking but not out of place. Some might argue the psychological twist exists in the film from beginning. It could have had just a little bit more explanation, but did well enough for itself and really did not seem out of place or false.
Apparently when the film was originally cut, it was given an NC-17 rating, but in order to get U.S. distribution as an R film the filmmakers had to cut out about a minute of material. The minute or so that was cut out of the movie really seems to be a good example of the MPAA just flexing its muscles and not really accomplishing much. High Tension is gory and I can’t see that it would have been that much more gory with the extra runtime. I may have actually felt better (no more shocked and no more likely to go on my own killing spree) had they not cut out the scenes. I would have like to have seen them stick to their guns (knives?).
But that change is not the only one that I disagree with. There are several areas where English is dubbed over the actors’ voices, but many scenes where subtitles are still used. The dub was not necessary; the subtitles were just fine.
Something else of note about High Tension is a lack of gratuitous scenes or camera shots. The split second of nudity and the moment of sexuality are completely appropriate for the film. There is no unwarranted sex, drugs, or rock and roll; any and all in the film is basically real and useful to the progression of the plot. There are a few butt and body shots that were a little out of place and the film could have been just fine without them, but we can let them slide because the rest of the film was handled so very well.
Although I don’t agree with remakes, I would be interested in seeing what the director (Alexandre Aja) will do with his announced next film, The Hills Have Eyes. High Tension reminded me of being 12 and loving horror films. It also reminded me that scary movies don’t have to be about the graphics that I see, but that what is scary is real and bloody.
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