HAUTE TENSION

My favorite horror film of the past decade would come down to two films, Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later" or Alexandre Aja's "Haute Tension". In the end, I lean more towards "Haute Tension" just because I think it's a splendid tribute to the slasher genre with classic suspense mixed with a lot of new and innovative surprises. It was the slasher genre that got me into horror films so maybe that has something to do with choosing it over "Days". The thing that "Haute Tension" lacks in comparrison to "Days" is that this zombie formula film had a lot of great emotion and really brought the zombie genre into reality. The dead rising from the grave is a little too science fiction/revelation to buy but a blood virus that heightens aggression and rage turning victims into homicidals looking to destroy anything living in their paths...its possible. But I'm gonna talk about "Haute Tension" or as its called here in the States, "High Tension". Basically because I just finished a new peice of artwork based on the film.

I first heard about Haute Tension about a year or so before it hit American theaters. I was at Wild and Woolly Video here in Louisville and I overheard one of the staff members recommending it to one of the other customers. He was saying that the movie was getting some serious buzz and was slated to be the next big hit in horror in the US. They had gotten their hands on a DVD copy from Korea. Funny how this French horror flick made it to DVD in Korea a year before it hit American theaters. The customer decided to pass but I snatched it up in a heartbeat. The film looked awesome and I had high hopes.

Brenda and I watched it that night and I was enthralled from beginning to end. In the end, I declared this one of the most suspenseful films I've ever seen. The movie really lives up to the title, this movie is nothing but pure and relentless tension.

The film starts out as we see flashes through a title sequence of the main character Marie (played by Cecile De France) as she is making her way through the forest bleeding badly. She is obviously trying to get away from something in the woods that is after her. She finds a road and waves down a car. Marie wakes up in a car that is being driven by her best friend Alexia (played by Maiwenn who some may recognize as the blue alien opera singer
in Luc Besson's science fiction flick The Fifth Element) All of this has been a bad dream and Marie tells Alex about the oddness of it. She says that in the dream she was being stalked by herself. The two are travelling out into the countryside of France to spend a weekend with Alex's parents who have just bought a farm in the middle of nowhere. Cut to a dirty old, menacing truck parked off the road somewhere in a field. We hear a man grunting from the driver's side, we cannot see his face but we can see that he is a worker of some kind based on his blue ballcap and his brown coveralls which are covered in dirt and oil. He appears to be recieving oral sex from a black haired woman in his lap. We hear his pleasure end as he suddenly tosses the severed woman's head out the window like trash. Pretty insane introduction to our killer (played by the legendary French baddie Phillipe Nahon who's film "I Stand Alone" is also a real treat of sadistic proportions).
Marie and Alex reach the farm and settle in for the night. Marie cannot sleep so she decides to have a smoke outside. The night is still and dark as Hell. She goes back inside and lies down in the attic's guest bedroom. The wind is blowing and making the old farmhouse creak and bump so she grabs her walkman and turns on a relaxing Reggae jam and then decides to put herself to sleep by masturbating. As she does this, the killer pulls up in front of the house and rings the doorbell. Alex's father answers the door just as Marie becomes aware and looks out the window to the front porch. She is just in time to see the killer raise a straight razor into the air and slash her friend's father in the face. From this point the film becomes a tense cat and mouse game where the killer moves through the house and starts to kill the family and take Alex as a trophy. He has no knowledge of Marie's presense sense she doesn't appear in any of the family photos in the house. Marie spends the next hour trying to stay out of the killer's eyesite while trying to save her best friend who is taken away by the killer. How long will she remain unseen by this sadistic serial killer?

In some hands, this movie may have been garbage but I think it's pretty evident from reel one that director Alexandre Aja not only knows this genre well but that he has a great eye and a wonderful storytelling ability. The movie is perfectly paced to have you sitting on the edge of your seat the entire time. The movie is also very beautiful to look at. The cinematography and art direction at top notch. Not to mention the amazing soundtrack that is made up of odd sounds and tones like all great horror films seem to have. It also has a selection of source music that really makes it special. The Reggae song by U Rob "Runaway Girl" is very nice and the use of Muse's "New Born" during a car chase sequence is totally cool. (New Born is my current profile song). The film's gore is also on a high level. Aja hired make-up effects master Gionnetto De Rossi who is best known for his work with Italian director Lucio Fulci best known for his classic "Zombi". The gore looks real and painful in the film.

We can't pass up the cast either. Nahon is at home in this role as the wicked killer. He has spent his career playing these kinds of roles and was trying to avoid them like the plague when Aja approached him but he couldn't pass up the chance to be in this movie. Nahon, who is actually shorter than the actresses in the film seems like a large, dirty old brute of a man who is completely capable of doing anything he damn well wants to. His movements are calculated and slow. He knows what he's doing, this is his work and he loves it. He also likes to toy with his prey. Nahon meets his match in Cecile De France as heroine Marie who is probably one of the best heroines of the past few decades. She's tough, fit and a balls to the wall fighter. Marie becomes the hero of the film. She doesn't go running to the police, she goes after this maniac to save her friend's life. It's all up to her to do it and she goes at the killer like gang busters leading to a final confrontation that is as violent and primitive as the battlefields of the barbarian age. One of the things I love about Aja's style is that he loves to do that classic last stand theme in his finales. It's almost a western senseability. It is really evident in his follow up to "Tension", the remake of Wes Craven's 1977 classic survival horror romp "The Hills Have Eyes" in which Doug, a pacifist grabs a ball bat and goes after the savages who killed his wife and stole his baby. De France goes through so many transformations in this film and they all feel real. I can't imagine anyone else playing the role she was so good in it.

For those of you who have seen it, by now you know of one of the film's most important moments. The movie has a hell of a twist that you simply will not see coming. Aja hit a homer with this one and he is probably my favorite new horror director working out there today. I like him even more than Rob Zombie and Eli Roth put together. With "Tension" he was trying to capture that whole "Last House on the Left", "Death Weekend", "Hills Have Eyes", "I Spit on your Grave" spirit. A woman in peril who has to become an axe weilding killer herself if she's going to survive this whole ordeal. That played a major role in my writing my own survival horror yarn, "Girl Number Three".

I just really love this movie. It is an aquired taste but I think if you watch it and really pay attention to the things I have shed a light on in this little writing of mine, then you may be able to watch it and see it for what it is, a brilliant addition to the slasher genre that is both classic and new in a very exciting and bloody disgusting way. Check out the trailer for this kickass horror flick below and if you haven't seen it yet for God's sake man, what are you waiting for? I know some of you aren't big on foreign films but the US DVD comes with an English dubbed version of the film.