TEN of TERROR #6: Haute Tension

This instalment goes foreign! If you live in the UK you will know it as Swtichblade Romance, and if you’re North American the title card read High Tension. I’m a pretentious film-blogger in Canada, so of course I use the film’s french (and actual) title. That film is our sixth entry in TEN of TERROR… Haute Tension.

I, like most other cats that took a chance on this flick, walked past this title in my local blue-yellow video rental chain a few years ago and the box art sold me on a $6 rental: a skinny, blond girl soaked in blood, wielding a circular-saw. Like everyone else, I wasn’t quite expecting what I saw once the film started up. Extreme gore, overt sexuality and perversion, severe dismemberment and outrageous violence are the brick and mortar of Haute Tension; normally this level of explicitness would turn me off a film – take Saw for example – but in this case I found the story, this horror take on the cat-and-mouse model, keeping me engaged. It is like driving past a car-wreck that you can’t take your eyes off of.

The films is about two college girlfriends, Marie (Cécile de France) and Alex (Maïwenn Le Besco), who head to Alex’s parent’s house in the french countryside for the weekend. A visit from a disgusting serial killer later, and Alex is hogtied in the back of his truck and Marie is along for the ride.

The film is co-written and directed by Alexandre Aja, who gained a bit of attention after the North American release of the film. He was touted as a “director to watch” and made good on his hype with the visceral 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes, but a flop with 2008’s Mirrors has since thrown him off the mainstream map. It’s a shame really, because The Hills Have Eyes, and even more so Haute Tension, really are technically well directed and I believe Aja can bring some strong films to the horror genre. His next film will be another remake, Piranha 3-D, starring Elizabeth Shue (?!), Ving Rhames, Richard Dreyfuss, Christopher Lloyd and Jerry O’Connell. Though the concept of giant killer… piranhas excites me, I’m not holding out hope for this film and would instead like to see Aja bring something original to the table. But back to the film at hand…

There’s three very distinct acts of Haute Tension, each with their own homage to the genre. The first act of the film, hands down the most shocking and visually profound, is the love-child of Takashi Miike and Tobe Hooper, while the middle-act, the slow-burn creaky floor-board thriller is almost hitchcockian in tone. The film concludes with a twisted mind-fuck of a third-act with hints of Lucio Fulci and M. Night Shayamalan (before he sucked hard). Although these comparisons may draw disbelief from you – understandably, the aforementioned filmmakers are of a high-calibre – I merely mean to point out the tones and aesthetic cues of which Aja seemingly called upon to craft his own film. With Haute Tension, you can tell that Aja is new, still learning his craft, but to his credit as absurd as the film may be it certainly is entertaining. Dare I say that there are moments where he nearly comes off like the french-horror Tarantino.

Appalling murder scenes aside, Haute Tension faced a couple hurdles. The MPAA had their way with the film, removing a solid 3 minutes from the opening murder-scene to bring the rating down from NC-17 to R for American theatrical audiences. The full NC-17 cut was however released on an unrated DVD. The film has also received some attention for bearing an oddly-similar resemblance to the Dean Koontz (haha funny name) novel titled Intensity. Apparently there are paramount scenes in the film that are nearly identical to the book, with exception to the last few minutes… the film’s big twist ending.

Haute Tension fits nicely into TEN of TERROR, as it’s a lesser-known horror film, and a genre-spanning one at that. It manages to fit suspense, ultra-violence, and psychedelic plot-twists into one inventive, homage-filled and stylized little flick. Definitely worth adding to your horror-film cue this year.

Trivia

• In the Silent Hill: Homecoming video game, an unlock-able weapon – the circular saw – earns you the achievement “High Tension”.
• “Aja & Freres” can be read on the back of the killer’s overalls. This is, of course a reference to director Alexandre Aja.
• The film was shot in only 36 days.
• There is a scene where a blood-splatter hits the camera lens; this was, in fact, unintentional.
• SPOILER: The murder of Jimmy was inspired by the Scatman Crothers/axe scene from The Shining.
• Alexandre Aja presented the script to Luc Besson, who convinced them to heavy alter the pacing of the twist-ending.
• One of the cameras used in the film was soaked with so much fake blood, that when used in a totally different movie it began to leak.

That does it for this entry. Come back real soon for TEN of TERROR #7!