Daily Movie Rec 9/20/2023
High Tension (2003)
"I won't let anyone come between us anymore."
Directed by: Alexandre Aja
Cinematography by: Maxime Alexandre
Country: France
Plot:
College friends Alex and Marie escape to Alex's family's farmhouse for a quiet weekend of solitude and studying, but those plans quickly go to hell when a barbaric killer appears on their doorstep.
Reasons to watch:
[SPOILERS]
High Tension's clumsy twist ending unfortunately plays into the damaging stereotypes that Queer lust = mentally ill = a dangerous psychopath, as outside of that, director Alexandre Aja crafted a fittingly tense and densely atmospheric nightmare of an exploitation-horror film. The sound design is fantastically unnerving in its attention to detail, and Maxime Alexandre's moody cinematography (he's become a bit of a go-to for horror media since his DoP debut with High Tension) helps Aja to capture the chilling out-of-body dread of a horrifying dream come to life. Not that the genre wasn't already turning up the graphic violence by 2003, but High Tension and its brutal, disturbingly realistic practical effects would have a notable impact on the gruesome gorefests and splatter films - and especially the unbelievably grisly New French Extremity movement of his fellow countrymen - that would dominate horror for the rest of the decade, inciting a renewed interest within the U.S. in Euro-horror (you can even see traces of its style in recent exploitation-horror flicks like Terrifier [2016]).
Where to watch:
Prime Video/Tubi (although I sailed the seas to find a non-dubbed French-language version)
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