Director: Alexandre Aja
Writers: Alexandre Aja, Grégory Levasseur
Stars: Cécile de France, Maïwenn, Philippe Nahon
1 hour, 31 minutes
Get it from Amazon: https://amzn.to/2l8WUhx
An injured girl limps through the forest as the credits roll.
Marie and Alexia are driving along and Marie explains that what we just saw was a dream. They’re going to spend some time in the country, at Alexia’s parents home, to study away from the city.
A man is in a dirty old van getting… pleasured by a woman. He finishes up and drops her severed head out of the window and drives off.
The girls arrive at the house. Alexia’s Dad lets them in and they meet Tom, Alexia’s little brother. They talk about boys for a bit and then finally head off to bed.
The man in the truck drives up and rings the doorbell. Dad answers and gets stabbed in the head. The family dog gets it next. Mother comes down the stairs to see what’s going on, and she’s attacked.
Marie hears all this and tries to climb out the window. She struggles to find a working phone jack to plug into. Meanwhile, the killer starts up the stairs… She hides under the bed, and he passes her by.
Alexia is upstairs sleeping with earplugs in and misses the whole thing, until the killer wakes her up.
Marie hides in the bedroom closet until the mother crawls in looking for the phone. The killer cuts her throat right in front of Marie, still hiding. It’s another good gore shot. The killer then saws her hand off, spraying blood everywhere.
Marie finds Alexia, but she’s chained up, and she can’t get the chain open. Meanwhile little Tom runs into the cornfield, and the killer goes after him with a shotgun. Marie finally finds a phone, but the lines’s been cut.
The guy carries Alexia out to his truck. Marie grabs a knife from the kitchen and hides in his truck. The guy locks the back door to the truck and drives off with both girls in the back. He smiles as he looks at the photos of the girls he’s collected.
They stop at a gas station, and Marie tells the guy inside to call the police, then she goes and hide. The guy acts weird, and the killer gives him an axe through the chest, then steps in the guy, driving the axe in deeper. The killer locks all the doors and starts to hunt for whoever the clerk was looking at.
Finally the guy drives off and Marie gets to a phone and calls the police. She can’t tell the police where she is, so they can’t help. She takes the clerk’s car and goes off in pursuit!
Before long it becomes a battle between his old truck and her sports car. She winds up upside-down in the forest with a burning car. She gets out and limps over to a nearby greenhouse. She grabs a big stick and wraps it in barbed wire, now she’s ready for him. She whacks him with a rock and then the barbed wire stick. When he falls down, she just keeps beating. He still doesn’t die, so she smothers him with a bag.
Then, there’s a twist. The killer’s not really dead and he has a huge concrete saw. He chases Alexia through the woods, Texas-Chainsaw style.
Commentary
Haute Tension is just French for “High Tension,” and this movie does fit that name. The first twenty-five minutes is really boring setup, but once the killings (finally) begin, it’s just one long game of cat-and-mouse.
The killings are all very creative, especially the last couple. The blood, gore, and makeup effects in this are simply awesome.
I don’t usually like straight-up slasher films, but this is really good.