Image Courtesy of Amazon.com
Director:
Alexandre Aja
Cast:
Cécile De France……….Marie
Maïwenn Le Besco……….Alexia
Philippe Nahon……….Le tueur
Franck Khalfoun……….Jimmy
Andrei Finti……….Le père d’Alex
Oana Pellea……….La mère d’Alex
Marco Claudiu Pascu……….Tom
Jean-Claude de Goros……….Capitaine gendarmerie
Bogdan Uritescu……….Gendarme
Gabriel Spahiu……….Homme voiture
The Movie
Can a movie maintain a high level of quality throughout and still be able to pull of a nonsensical plot twist that nullifies the whole of it? That’s the quandary of French horror movie High Tension.
The crux of the film is Marie (Cécile De France) fighting for her life against Le tueur (Philippe Nahon). Le tueur is your typical mad killer, slicing and dicing because it’s what he does. Marie is with her friend Alexia (Maiwenn Le Besco) and Alexia’s family when Le tueur strikes, slashing his way through the family and kidnapping Alexia. Marie, who manages to hide and escape the killer’s notice, decides to follow him out. She ends up kidnapped as well. Marie manages to figure out several ways to not get rescued on the way, culminating in a fight to the finish with the killer that could lead several interesting ways. Too bad it goes in the most ridiculous, absurd and borderline insulting manner to ruin what had been an incredibly gory and truly scary horror film.
It is a shame; the movie is a wonderful splatter fest until the big climactic finale ruins it all. Fans of blood and guts are bound to love this, with lots of incredibly shocking visuals to match. There are plenty of terrifying moments and truly suspenseful moments until the final act; there are plenty of interesting and creative manner of splatter used.
And to be honest, High Tension is a great horror film until then, as it’s a relatively interesting concept with the gore to match. This is the sort of movie that isn’t made anymore to great effect in the horror genre. It’s not for the weak of heart, as there are plenty of stomach-churning moments for even the most experienced of horror fans.
Sometimes a plot twist can make a good movie into a great one if it’s timed correctly and is unexpected. While the twist in this one is unexpected, it isn’t very good and just destroys the groundwork High Tension has created.
Score : 2.5 / 10
The Video
With a 2.35:1 widescreen transfer, High Tension looks fabulous. For a film that exists for some truly scary thrills, they are presented in mortifyingly great detail.
The Audio
With a Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound, the movie also sounds great as well. There is a good separation of sound and it allows the film’s audio (a vital component of the tension) to truly do its job well.
The Extras
Introduction by Alexandre Aja and star Gregory Levasseur is a quick introduction to the DVD by the director and the artistic director.
Building Tension focuses on how they built up the sort of tension use throughout the movie to generate suspense. Narrated by Aja in French, this featurette focuses on how they had to build up the story and the tension without giving away the big plot twist at the end. At around 10 minutes, it focuses on the visual and audio methods of tension generation.
Giannetto De Rossi: The Truth, The Madness & The Magic focuses on how they crafted the makeup and other special effects about the film. With Levasseur and Aja narrating, they talk about how they achieved certain looks and what they were looking t accomplish. Running around eight minutes, one of the more interesting segments is when they talk about slashing throats and the makeup involved from mannequin to the actress/actor.
Haute Horror: Making of High Tension is a behind the scenes featurette on how the film was crafted. Running around 24 minutes, the featurette focuses on the hows and whys each person was casted, with commentary from the cast and crew. Make sure to turn the subtitles on, as the cast and crew mix and match their English and French much like the film does with its overdubs.
Selected Scenes Commentary with Alexandre Aja and Cecile de France contains several key scenes from the film with commentary by the director and his star about them.
Trailers for DVD version of Crash, Rize, House of D, Desperate Souls, undead , Dark Forest 2 as well as the theatrical release of Saw 2.
Also included in the DVD release are the uncut footage from the original version of the film which earned the initial “NC-17” rating from the MPAA. The theatrical version that received an “R” is also available to be viewed as well.
Score : 9.5 / 10
