Best friends Marie and Alexia decide to spend a quiet weekend at Alexia's parents' secluded farmhouse. But on the night of their arrival, the girls' idyllic getaway turns into an endless night of horror.
A young woman's quest for revenge against the people who kidnapped and tormented her as a child leads her and a friend, who is also a victim of child abuse, on a terrifying journey into a living hell of depravity.
Lucas and Clementine live peacefully in their isolated country house, but one night they wake up to strange noise... they're not alone... and a group of hooded assailants begin to terrorize them throughout the night.
Desperate to repay his debt to his ex-wife, an ex-con plots a heist at his new employer's country home, unaware that a second criminal has also targeted the property, and rigged it with a series of deadly traps.
A widower takes an offer to screen girls at a special audition, arranged for him by a friend to find him a new wife. The one he fancies is not who she appears to be after all.
A lonely young woman traumatized by a difficult childhood and her increasingly desperate attempts to connect with the people around her is sent into a murderous tailspin.
When the Davison family comes under attack during their wedding anniversary getaway, the gang of mysterious killers soon learns that one of the victims harbors a secret talent for fighting back.
Alexia travels with her friend Marie to spend a couple of days with her family in their farm in the country. They arrive late and they are welcomed by Alexia's father. Late in the night, a sadistic and sick killer breaks into the farmhouse, slaughters Alexia's family--including their dog--and kidnaps Alexia. Marie hides from the criminal and tries to help the hysterical and frightened Alexia, chase the maniac, and disclose his identity in the end.Written by
Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The only studio filming done was shooting the scenes between Marie and Alexia inside the killer's truck. The studio itself was merely a garage. See more »
Goofs
When the car driver is attacked near the end, Alex is showered in blood, including her face and teeth. In the next scenes, her teeth are perfectly white and the blood has dried very quickly. See more »
Quotes
[last lines]
Alexia:
She can't see me, right?
See more »
Alternate Versions
The South Korean theatrical re-release and DVD release has cuts totaling under a minute to all the murders. Also a brief shot of a severed hand next to a phone is missing. These cuts were finally restored for the special edition DVD in 2005. See more »
New Born
by Muse
(Matthew Bellamy)
(p) 2001 Taste Media Ltd, under exclusive license to naïve for France
(c) Taste Media Ltd / naïve for France
By kind permission of Taste Media and naïve See more »
The 70's and 80's produced what I consider to be the best horror films ever made. There were more independent films being made 20 and 30 years ago and that led to less studio intervention. I seriously doubt Sam Raimi could have made his classic gore fest THE EVIL DEAD if The Weinsteins were behind the scenes. And I know for a fact that Tobe Hooper would never have gotten away with what he did to make Texas CHAINSAW MASSACRE as shock inducing as he did. And finally, what I consider is the most disturbing film ever made, never would have been made if guys like Michael Ovitz were behind it. Could you imagine if Ovitz was visiting the set of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, took a look at the dailies and then said, "okay, that intestine part has to go, the slapping of the naked girls has to be trimmed down and the fellatio part has to be edited." Last House would not be the classic that it is today and it certainly would not be a paradigm to all horror films that many aspire to make today.
Now, what we have are a plethora of films that follow in M. Night Shyamalan's footsteps after his monster and genre defining hit SIXTH SENSE. It's a great film that puts the suspense back in horror. And as much as I love Sixth Sense, as much as I respect what Shyamalan has done to help redefine horror, too many of today's film makers try to emulate him and screw things up.
HIGH TENSION, for the first 80 minutes of the movie is a true testament to the basic primal animal that we are, or can be. It is an uncompromising and relentless attack of our senses, our nerves and our being. It shreds the neo horror film ideology that THE RING and Sixth Sense seemed to invent and instead grabs a hold of your intestines and squeezes and then twists. It is about as intense of a film as I have seen in quite some time. While not as sick and depraved as Last House on the Left, it treads in the same water. This has the look and feel of a 70's guts on the wall horror film and for that, I applaud Alexandre Aja for writing and directing a film that looks like it had very little studio intervention and as such the film is about as shocking a film as you will see from any North American distributed film.
High Tension's strength is that it is about as violent and blood soaked as any film from the period that it pays homage to. Gone is the horror film blueprint that teens seem to love today. This is a film made by a director that grew up perhaps admiring some of the greats from three decades ago. You can see homages to films like Friday THE 13TH, MADMAN, THE STEPFATHER, and of course Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There are at least 4 scenes in this film that truly shocked me. The violence is real, it is macabre and it is brutal. Blood spills, it flows, and it sprays. I have never seen someone get their throat slit, but I would imagine it would something like it does in this film.
The pace of the film is frenetic and at about the twenty minute mark, the dialogue pretty much stops and what we have is a cat and mouse game. Aja does his talking with chainsaws, barbed wire and a switchblade. There is much attention to detail in this film and I guess that sort of justifies the end, which is about as beguiling as any legerdemain present in any of the films since Sixth Sense.
The ending has to be mentioned because as I'm sure many of you know by now, the ending is unnecessary chicanery. It just didn't need to be there. But to be fair, the film does allude to the road it is embarking on, it just seems like an extrinsic path. The denouement of the film, can be a distraction and take away from the raw emotion the film does a great job of making you feel up until this point. And if you examine the film, you'll realize that what you have seen for the last 80 minutes is pretty much impossible. I took all of that into consideration before writing this review. And what it comes down to is this: The films is so perfect before the preposterous ending, that you can kind of ignore the impossibilities and chicanery. If you can just see the film for all of its brilliance before the last ten minutes, you'll love the pure terror that this film presents us with. But just a word of warning. The ending is misleading and dishonest.
This film is an amalgamation of Last House and Sixth Sense. The twist, which may have been attractive to the talking heads in charge of the studio, also takes away from the artistic integrity of the film. I, as other reviewers have mentioned, would much rather a psycho killer gone mad than a film that has to deceive us with a SLEEPAWAY CAMP type slap in the face. While Sleepaway Camp is a good film but not nearly in the class of High Tension, the ending fit there. Here, it is just plain wrong.
High Tension scores a 9/10 from me because it is about as good a horror film I have seen in the last ten years. The last 10 minutes drags it down to a 9 instead of a 10, but this film is raw, it is primal and it is made with ingenuity and care and it is a true homage to the horror films that I grew up with. This is truly a must see for any horror fan.
153 of 253 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful to you?
| Report this
The 70's and 80's produced what I consider to be the best horror films ever made. There were more independent films being made 20 and 30 years ago and that led to less studio intervention. I seriously doubt Sam Raimi could have made his classic gore fest THE EVIL DEAD if The Weinsteins were behind the scenes. And I know for a fact that Tobe Hooper would never have gotten away with what he did to make Texas CHAINSAW MASSACRE as shock inducing as he did. And finally, what I consider is the most disturbing film ever made, never would have been made if guys like Michael Ovitz were behind it. Could you imagine if Ovitz was visiting the set of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, took a look at the dailies and then said, "okay, that intestine part has to go, the slapping of the naked girls has to be trimmed down and the fellatio part has to be edited." Last House would not be the classic that it is today and it certainly would not be a paradigm to all horror films that many aspire to make today.
Now, what we have are a plethora of films that follow in M. Night Shyamalan's footsteps after his monster and genre defining hit SIXTH SENSE. It's a great film that puts the suspense back in horror. And as much as I love Sixth Sense, as much as I respect what Shyamalan has done to help redefine horror, too many of today's film makers try to emulate him and screw things up.
HIGH TENSION, for the first 80 minutes of the movie is a true testament to the basic primal animal that we are, or can be. It is an uncompromising and relentless attack of our senses, our nerves and our being. It shreds the neo horror film ideology that THE RING and Sixth Sense seemed to invent and instead grabs a hold of your intestines and squeezes and then twists. It is about as intense of a film as I have seen in quite some time. While not as sick and depraved as Last House on the Left, it treads in the same water. This has the look and feel of a 70's guts on the wall horror film and for that, I applaud Alexandre Aja for writing and directing a film that looks like it had very little studio intervention and as such the film is about as shocking a film as you will see from any North American distributed film.
High Tension's strength is that it is about as violent and blood soaked as any film from the period that it pays homage to. Gone is the horror film blueprint that teens seem to love today. This is a film made by a director that grew up perhaps admiring some of the greats from three decades ago. You can see homages to films like Friday THE 13TH, MADMAN, THE STEPFATHER, and of course Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There are at least 4 scenes in this film that truly shocked me. The violence is real, it is macabre and it is brutal. Blood spills, it flows, and it sprays. I have never seen someone get their throat slit, but I would imagine it would something like it does in this film.
The pace of the film is frenetic and at about the twenty minute mark, the dialogue pretty much stops and what we have is a cat and mouse game. Aja does his talking with chainsaws, barbed wire and a switchblade. There is much attention to detail in this film and I guess that sort of justifies the end, which is about as beguiling as any legerdemain present in any of the films since Sixth Sense.
The ending has to be mentioned because as I'm sure many of you know by now, the ending is unnecessary chicanery. It just didn't need to be there. But to be fair, the film does allude to the road it is embarking on, it just seems like an extrinsic path. The denouement of the film, can be a distraction and take away from the raw emotion the film does a great job of making you feel up until this point. And if you examine the film, you'll realize that what you have seen for the last 80 minutes is pretty much impossible. I took all of that into consideration before writing this review. And what it comes down to is this: The films is so perfect before the preposterous ending, that you can kind of ignore the impossibilities and chicanery. If you can just see the film for all of its brilliance before the last ten minutes, you'll love the pure terror that this film presents us with. But just a word of warning. The ending is misleading and dishonest.
This film is an amalgamation of Last House and Sixth Sense. The twist, which may have been attractive to the talking heads in charge of the studio, also takes away from the artistic integrity of the film. I, as other reviewers have mentioned, would much rather a psycho killer gone mad than a film that has to deceive us with a SLEEPAWAY CAMP type slap in the face. While Sleepaway Camp is a good film but not nearly in the class of High Tension, the ending fit there. Here, it is just plain wrong.
High Tension scores a 9/10 from me because it is about as good a horror film I have seen in the last ten years. The last 10 minutes drags it down to a 9 instead of a 10, but this film is raw, it is primal and it is made with ingenuity and care and it is a true homage to the horror films that I grew up with. This is truly a must see for any horror fan.