High Tension Haute tension

Alexandre Aja, France, 2003, 35mm, 2.35, colour, 91′

FRI September 19 / 19.00 / Slovenian cinematheque

It sets off on a well-trodden plot: two girls (Marie and Alex, in a car, in the woods), one house, one night, one killer, but Alexandre Aja’s »emancipatory« slasher spins out into a narrative-psychological twist that brought it very mixed reviews, to say the least, despite its welcome breath of fresh air. If the “heroine” of early horror film was either a black widow type or a passive sacrificial lamb while the classical modern slasher grants her a seemingly more progressive role of the fearless, yet innocent final girl, the hyperactive, androgynous “final girl” Cécile De France represents the only possible answer to the gloomy era of metrosexual masculinity.

An indisputable gem of the raw and realistic, transgressive and wittily misanthropic new wave of French (and French-speaking Belgian) horror film, the genre strain of “New French Extremity”, which brought us some of the best horror films and filmmakers of the new millennium: Martyrs (Pascal Laugier, 2008), À l’intérieur (Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury, 2007), Frontière(s) (Xavier Gens, 2007), Ils (David Moreau & Xavier Palud, 2006), Calvaire (Fabrice Du Welz, 2004), Dans ma peau (Marina de Van, 2002).

“In a time when Hollywood is practically spewing out remakes of 70s shockers (Dawn of the Dead, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, etc.) and we’re probably just a short step away from the remake of shocker The Hills Have Eyes – or the remakes of The Last house on the Left and the Dario Argento slashers, for that matter – it’s good to see a slasher film that, granted, does look back, to the 70s, but isn’t taking that solely as a nostalgic, cinephile, vapid gag for the multiplex audience which loves the shock, but not the perversion and deviance. High Tension, which looks like a return to the heart of darkness, is perverse and deviant – and French and irreversibly hardcore.”
– Marcel Štefančič, jr., Mladina