Haute
Tension
Directed
by: Alexandre Aja
Written
by: Alexandre Aja & Grégory Levasseur
Lionsgate R1 Release
Various
Editions
“An unabashed, unironic homage to
Philip
French, The Guardian
“Die-hard horror aficionados will
probably consider this a return to a purist slasher-movie
ethos.”
Wendy
Ide, Times Online
“Designed to terrify not entertain,
director Alexander Aja certainly proves his love of
the genre.”
Jamie
Russell, BBC i films
The story of this confronting experience
is fairly straight forward, at least on the surface. Two female students, Marie
and Alex, set off to Alex's parent's isolated home in
the country to study. Come nightfall, everything changes. A truly deranged
killer pulls up at the front door, disposes of Alex’s family and throws Alex in
the back of a truck. Marie hides from
the killer and follows in the hope of saving her friend..
Yet all is clearly not as it seems.
The filming is powerful, visceral and
extremely confronting. The violence is ugly and backed with a moody minimalist
soundtrack that will keep you on the edge of your seat right the way through.
The ending is certainly twisted and reviewers have been much divided about its
effectiveness.
There are lots of interesting hints when
you watch the film after realizing (spoiler warning !) that Marie is actually the killer and
that the “Texas Chainsaw” character is a figure of her imagination and part of
herself. The image of the killer seems very caricatured and larger than life,
he seems stronger than any real killer and his behavior is stereotypical. At
times the killer lacks character and is very dimensional. His truck is
nightmare like and there is no real connect between the killer, his truck and
reality. It all seems too extreme and
dream like, which of course, it is. The dream that Alex has right at the start
of the film gives it all away, Alex dreams she is being chased by a killer, yet
the killer is herself but most people watching the film will not make this
connection until they see the climax of the film.
This is a very slick production; superb
filming, great sound and a constant build up of stress and fear. This is a very
successful and terrifying slasher film, to summarize
the plot does not provide the mood or power of the film, certainly on a base
level it is about a killer chopping, slicing and crunching his way through
rural France but with expert directing, film, sound and mood it is far more powerful an
experience than words can easily describe.
After several delays of its planned theatrical season, Haute Tension will finally see the
light of day in
Hitting shelves as High Tension, the disc will feature an uncut
2.35:1 widescreen presentation as well as the original French audio track and
an optional English dub (both in 5.1), The Making of featurette,
photo gallery and production notes, interviews with cast and crew, and
theatrical trailers.