Horror is dead . . . or is it?

American horror may very well be, and in an industry that is now filled with bland sequels and poorly crafted remakes, it’s hard to find something that is at least interesting and shocking, but that’s where director Alexandre Aja comes into things. While American studios are busy getting together their next batch of mundane and pointless horror films, Aja was working on something a bit more extreme and the French director made quite a name for himself in Europe. So much so that it would have been impossible for studios here to ignore his first horror film.

High Tension, known under the name Switchblade Romance in the United Kingdom, is Aja’s entry into the world of survival horror, a theme that he would then follow up later with his remake of Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes, and this would also prove to be an instance on the correct way to remake a horror film. High Tension is a very simple idea that is gruesomely executed as two friends; Marie (Cécile De France) and Alex (Maïwenn Le Besco) take a weekend trip to Marie’s parent’s home out in the remote countryside. What should be a peaceful time of relaxation is quickly shattered when a truck driver shows up for a home invasion and kills the parents, then terrorizes the girls. Marie is kidnapped and Alex is now forced to try and rescue her friend, but it all leads up to a surprise twist that no one could have seen coming.

Some have claimed that Aja took the idea for High Tension from the Dean Koontz novel, and film of the same name, Intensity. The idea do have similarities, but the idea of someone being chased by a deranged killer is really nothing new and harkens back to the origins of the slasher genre. High Tension however isn’t necessarily a film that I would lump into the category of “slasher” but instead, it is survival horror. With slasher films you have a killer, usually one that quickly becomes an icon, hunting and slaughtering teenagers, maybe even a few adults, but in this case we have a lone woman trying to save her friend as well as avoid running into a killer who seems to be trying to kill only her. Should someone get in his way, he’ll do whatever is necessary to eliminate them before turning his attention back to Alex.

Aja manages to maintain a high degree of fear and heart pounding terror from the moment that the trucker enters the home until the final twist is revealed in the film, and even then, it continues. The movie has an unrelenting and utterly insatiable approach, and though there are a few moments when Aja tosses in what I would consider to be cheap scares, he more than makes up for this. Fear and pulse pounding terror aside though, the other thing that the French director excels at is gore, and plenty of it. Over the past few years, blood and gore in horror films really ahs turned into something of a cartoon approach with effects that just look too fake for their own good. High Tension does go for a bit more of a realistic look, though the over the top approach still has a bit of a far fetched nature to it. However, it is done well, and the extreme measures taken to sicken the viewer are quite forgivable and in fact, are to be applauded. Hollywood has really tried to go for more of an implied method to their killings and it has really been foreign and independent director’s that have seen otherwise.

High Tension doesn’t just stop with unrelenting terror and fear though, and Aja touches on a few other things that normally is overlooked or swept under the rug with horror films. Attempted rape, bondage, and even female masturbation are all thrown into the mix just to make things interesting. Of course, these weren’t really the things that caused the film to get a toned down (and sadly dubbed) theatrical release here in the United States. The good thing about the DVD release however is that not only is the theatrical cut found on the disc, but you can also view the uncut version of the film and both have the option of either a dubbed audio track or the original French language, something that I found to be much more preferable in the movie.

There are a number of bonus features found on the DVD as well, including an introduction from Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur, who also assisted with writing the script. The feature also has a commentary track with these two as well. The commentary option goes a little further and selected scenes from High Tension once again feature Aja as well as Cécile de France. You will also find behind the scenes features, so there are plenty of things to take in besides just the movie itself.

Aja impressed a number of people with High Tension, and for good reason. He’s going back to the roots of horror, focusing on blood, paranoia, and terror, and this is something that has been forgotten and instead replaced with horror movies that try and sell themselves of implied violence and jokes to kill the tension as well as scares that are telegraphed before they even happen. Aja’s style of film making is more along the lines of what used to come out of Italy years ago with shades of Argento found in the storytelling, but Aja in my opinion executes everything far better than what the overrated Italian fan-favorite has. With the level of terror and violence that Aja delivers here as well as what he has done to follow up, hopefully he will continue to do so and become another of the big names among an already, well-defined list of legends.

-mike-