Other Titles • Haute tension (2003) • Switchblade Romance • High Tension
Synopses for Switchblade Romance (2003)
1.
"It will scare the hell out of you!" -- Dennis Dermody, Paper Marie and Alexia are classmates and best friends. Hoping to prepare for their college exams in peace and quiet, they decide to spend a weekend in the country at Alexia's parents' secluded farmhouse. But in the dead of night, a stranger knocks on the front door. And with the first swing of his knife, the girls' idyllic weekend turns into an endless night of horror...
(22 votes)
2.
Home to some of the world's best food and fashion, the French also have the wonderful habit of producing some of the world's best movies. With High Tension, French director Alexandre Aja offers up a bloody buffet of terror; a violent concoction of style over substance, with a bloody French twist. Two college girlfriends, Maria and Alex, take a weekend to study at the secluded country home of Alex's parents. Shortly after their arrival, a mysterious killer appears, and things take a shockingly terrible turn for the worse. As the horror and body count rises, Maria and Alex find themselves fighting for their lives, and it's revealed that things are not exactly as they seem. Essentially a one-act cat-and-mouse affair, High Tension is an explosive bloody thrill ride that rarely lets up. Oozing style in every color-saturated frame and boasting some intense performances, Aja mainly succeeds in sustaining an intense momentum throughout the film. The plot occasionally suffers from a thin, flimsy storyline, and the abundant graphic scenes of violence will either thrill and delight, or simply disgust. Nonetheless, this adrenalin-fueled addition to the genre gives the American slasher flick a real run for its money. High Tension is high-art horror, and comes highly recommended. --Matt Wold
(18 votes)
3.
In the 1970s, moviegoers reveled in a new sub-genre of horror films that were low on plot, required only the most basic acting skills, and called upon dumb teenagers to die onscreen deaths in a multitude of strange and horrific ways. The slasher movie was born, and with it came classic features such as THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, HALLOWEEN, and FRIDAY THE 13TH. The genre enjoyed a postmodern revival in the late-20th and early-21st centuries with films such as SCREAM and SCARY MOVIE, but French director Alexandre Aja (FURIA) hauls the slasher film back to its roots with his gore-addled romp HIGH TENSION.
Like the most effective additions to the genre, HIGH TENSION's plot is elemental, and simply serves as a springboard for Aja to deliver lashes of blood and guts. Alex (Maiwenn Le Besco) and Marie (Cecile De France) are two teenage girls who head out to Alex's family home in the French countryside. Once there, their idyllic and peaceful time is abruptly disturbed when a maniac breaks into the house and butchers Alex's parents. The shadowy figure captures Alex and throws her into his van, while Marie escapes and sneaks into the vehicle in order to save her friend. By affording very little screen time to the unhinged protagonist who attacks the family, Aja creates a genuinely scary villain, recalling Wes Craven's treatment of Freddy Krueger in the first NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movie. While the violence is explicit and the girls fit perfectly into their roles, Aja prevents the film from lapsing into parody by packing a mind-bending twist into the plot. A valuable and fun addition to the canon of slasher films, HIGH TENSION shows there is still plenty of life left in the genre.
(18 votes)
4.
For much of its running time, High Tension earns its title as a gory and suspenseful tale of hot pursuit. Originally titled Switchblade Romance in England, and trimmed of its most excessive gore to avoid an NC-17 rating during its brief U.S. theatrical release, this French horror film provokes a memorable case of high anxiety from its alluring female lead (Cecile de France), but it's an otherwise brainless exercise with a ludicrous conclusion that renders the entire film null and void. It's essentially a Texas Chainsaw wanna-be, which isn't such a bad thing if you're a horror buff with an appetite for gruesome death at the hands of a brutal and nameless serial killer. Dressed in greasy coveralls and a baseball cap, and driving a rusty old delivery van, the killer indiscriminately destroys an entire family before chasing after the tomboyish Marie (de France), who is trapped in a nonsensical screenplay that won't let her go. With a high body count and buckets of bloodshed, High Tension has moments of delirious intensity, which is probably why Lion's Gate (bolstered by the success of Saw and other horror hits) deemed the film worthy of U.S. release with some (but not all) of its French dialogue badly dubbed in English. It's horror for die-hards only, and on those terms it's worth a look. --Jeff Shannon
(17 votes)
Mooviees.com is not the official site for this film.
All editorial views and opinions expressed here are for entertainment purposes only.
Movie Database
In Theaters
