Haute tension
2003 Horror / Thriller
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Credits
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Summary
Best friends Marie and Alex decide to take a break in the countryside to revise for their
exams. But soon after they arrive at Alex’s family home, a remote country house,
a sinister looking visitor arrives in a van. Marie watches in horror as the stranger
systematically slaughters Alex’s parents and her younger brother. Whilst trying
to rescue her friend, Marie ends up being trapped in the killer’s van as he drives off.
She manages to escape at a petrol station and makes a desperate attempt to find help so
that she can save Alex, who is chained up in the back of the van. It is hopeless.
Once the killer has disposed of the attendant at the petrol station and having failed
to get any support from the police, Marie has no other choice than to go after the killer
herself. The nightmare has only just begun…
Review
Alexandre Aja’s blood-soaked homage to the kind of gratuitously gory horror films that
earned cinema a bad name in the early 1980s is certainly not a film that will appeal to
all tastes. Whilst it has exceptional production values and is actually a rather
good film of its kind - certainly from the point of view of technical presentation, atmosphere
and performances – its unrelenting nihilistic mood and total lack of humour make it a
gruelling and pretty monotonous cinematic experience.
The fluid, voyeuristic camerawork and heart-thumping sound design are exceptional, working together to create a sustained sense of menace which makes most of the first half of the film almost unbearably tense. Watching this is like experiencing one of those horrific nightmares where you are trapped and at the mercy of some unseen, unremitting terror. Unfortunately, much of this psychological intensity is undermined by Aja’s predilection for the Grand Guignol, a perverse need to make each killing as visually spectacular and shocking as possible. Whilst the frenzied blood letting may satisfy and titillate the horror junkies, most well-adjusted cinema goers will either find them intolerably sick (to the point of walking straight of the cinema) or, more probably, excruciatingly funny. Haute tension is unashamedly a pastiche of a sub-genre in American cinema, heavily laden with clichés and all too obvious references to other films. Yet, despite this, the first half of the film holds up rather well, largely on account of a terrific, totally convincing performance from Cécile De France. The pace drops back several gears near the middle section and doesn’t quite regain its momentum, although the spectator’s interest is suddenly reawakened with a spectacular, and rather clever, plot twist within the last twenty minutes. The film suddenly acquires a new, perhaps more terrifying dimension, although Aja doesn’t quite manage to exploit the possibilities this offers. Instead, it's back to Texas Chainsaw Massacre style horror, with more night-time chases and another dose of gratuitous blood splattering. When finally the film has reached its gruesome climax, having well and truly run out of steam, there’s yet another twist. However, this one is totally unnecessary – an example of a scriptwriter trying to be just a little too clever - and the ending serves merely to unravel the thin web of logic that carried the narrative in what preceded it. It’s possible to make sense of all this, but is the person who enjoys this kind of film really likely to bother to make the intellectual effort to do that? Whilst its flaws are a little too obvious and irksome, Haute tension is a well-crafted homage to a genre which French cinema has tended to avoid, and it certainly shows that Alexandre Aja has great promise as a film director, providing he cancels that next consignment of theatrical blood. © James Travers 2006 Write a review for this film... |
 
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