Horror Film of the Week: High Tension

High Tension

Directed By: Alexandre Aja

Starring: Cecile De France, Maiwenn Le Besco, Philippe Nahon

Year of Release: 2003

Rated: R (Unrated on DVD)

1 hrs. 31 min.

Two college friends, Alex and Marie, travel to the home of Alex's parents for a weekend of heavy studying on the peaceful farm. As the family, including Alex's mother, father, and young brother, and Marie prepare to sleep, a home invasion turns the night upside down.

High Tension is brutish, gory, and bloody good. It has all the gross blood and graphic violence you expect from a true adrenaline-rush-inducing horror film. The way the film toys with the audience, using sound and long drawn out moments, creates suspense so terrifying I was nearly pulling my hair from the roots.

The film opens at what is essentially the end of the story. Marie runs through the woods and emerges onto a road, screaming for help, and we see glimpses of her in the hospital. We are then taken back to the beginning to see what happened to get Marie to the point of the opening scene. It's an interesting choice for sure, opening with the ending. As the audience, we can't help but feel like the filmmakers have read us the last paragraph before actually starting the novel from chapter one. However, the last great twist is much more shocking than you can imagine. You're almost guaranteed to scream, "Are you serious?!" And aren't the plot twists just as important a part of a horror film as the gore itself?

The intensity of the suspense is the real killer...that is, for the audience. The main idea is to scare you through extreme tension, and the filmmakers pull it off beautifully. From the very beginning, the audience is expected to be fraught with tension, because we are immediately thrown into Marie's situation, and we immediately feel the threat without having any establishing information.

The moments without dialogue are the most frightening, because the sound design of these scenes is what makes the story truly terrifying. In one scene, Marie walks outside to have a smoke. She walks around in the dark alone, sitting on a single swing several feet away from the house. There is no dialogue; the scene is eerily silent, save for the creak of the swing and her exhales as she smokes. The camera focuses her in a close up and nothing but darkness lies behind her. The viewer feels a creeping sensation, expecting someone to walk up behind her or for something big to occur. Yet, nothing happens. If the film can make us feel tense in an essentially harmless moment, then how do you think it feels in the moments of real danger?

High Tension is a brilliant horror film; it goes beyond gore and blood and violence into the realm of psychological thriller. The only thing to be aware of before checking out this piece of horror art is that it is a French film: it is dubbed in English. My recommendation is to set the DVD up so that it is in its original format without the dubbing, and set the subtitles. Having to read throughout the film will certainly not take anything from the experience, because, as I've stated previously, the tension is what moves the story, not the dialogue. A part of the performance is lost to the dubbing, so it's best to go with the subtitles when you check out this one.