Movie Review -- High Tension
On paper, the setup, and the entire story of this movie for that matter, looks like the vaguest, most incomplete story possible. Two college friends, Alex and Marie, travel back home to Alex's parents' house in the country. Late in the night, a total stranger rings the doorbell and immediately a mass murder begins. Alex's father, mother, little brother, and even the family dog are brutally murdered, and I mean brutally, to the point where one wonders how such images are allowed to be seen by the public.
The first 20-30 minutes of the movie are almost mind-numbingly boring, and that's what makes the entrance of The Killer (no kidding, that's his credited character name) so surprsing and horrifying. That, and the addition of the most gruesome on screen deaths possible. It's one thing to have a gory death, but to have the deaths spread out as long as they are in this movie (namely the father), makes me question if Alexandre Aja is okay in the head. My guess is no, he is not, and far from it.
So The Killer wrecks havoc on the family, and for some reason decides to kidnap Alex. The whole time Marie just watches, which might be the most irritating part of the movie, but that's to be debated at a later time. Regardless, the movie's abrupt switch from monotony to sheer thriller should be able to grab any viewer's attention, as well as The Killer's intention of murdering everyone but Alex. Why, Mr. Killer, why?
Well, as it turns out, there is a twist at the end of the movie, and for the sake of not ruining it, I'll just say it makes no sense. Not "makes no sense" as in I'm so confused and can't make ends meet, I mean anybody can take the plot twist, match it up with several scenes in the movie, and conclude that the writers really just screwed up. The movie's title works well because the vagueness can actually pick viewers' curiosity, and it's a very tense ride watching Marie come to Alex's rescue. Then when the ending hits, everything sort of feels cheap and unnecessary, not to mention incomplete.
Skooch's comments on Aja ring true after watching High Tension. Sure, it does a great job instilling terror into the audience, but there is a line between terror and gratuity. Any possible meaning or message in the film ends up lost amid the violence. Should the directing have stuck to the straightforward attack-and-rescue action, it could have been decent. Instead, it's just gross and a little insulting.
D+