Fridae

Boys and girls take note! With Halloween just around the corner, Haute Tension might just be the film to provide that gory inspiration for your party theme this year. If you can survive its entire blood-drenched duration in the darkened halls of the cinema that is. I was killed off by its bone-crunching gore one-third into the film. Scream Queens, here's one for you.

Alex and Marie are friends and classmates on a study-break trip to Alex's parent's farmstead. What starts out as an idyllic respite from the hustle and bustle of school life soon degenerates into a full-blown carnage courtesy of a mysterious psycho killer. Donning a Michael Myers-inspired coverall and a similar air of menacing reticence, this pysho killer (simply called le tueur, "the killer" in French) is a disgusting amalgam of the most gruesome mindless murderers ever to have graced the silver screen. Even Freddy has more humour than he. Ruthless and methodical in his rampage, the screen literally soaks up with blood as he calmly proceeds to decapitate and amputate every single family member in the household, including Alex's toddler brother. And it is up to the resourceful Marie (the gorgeous Cecile de France) to save the day. This is one chick you would want to think twice before asking Voulez vous coucher avec moi ce soir (French for Do you want to sleep with me tonight?). Or perhaps not.

Haute Tension plays like a French version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre that drips with a deliciously skin-crawling sexual undertone: we are treated to an early glimpse of the killer receiving head from a, well� decapitated head. There is also a, ahem, rather revealing shower scene that would surely drive some girls crazy - like what it had done to Le tueur. And it is this sexual undertone that makes Haute Tension a far more unbearable movie to watch compared to the usual fare of blood-and-gore slasher flick. It is frightening precisely because it is so sickening. Truly shuddering is when Alex (a pitiful Maїween) is raped by the killer while helplessly gagged and chained to her bed.

Alexandre Aja is a filmmaker in full confidence working in this particular horror genre. He knows how to choke up the scare-meter, and he does so in various imaginable, and unimaginable, ways. In the first killing rampage that occurs in the farmstead, Aja holds no bar in showing how the father (the first victim of the killing) was butchered: le tueur jams his head into the stairs banister with his foot and then calmly proceeds to drive a heavy wooden bureau straight into it, from the side. Upon seeing that scene, my friend sitting next to me commented that even Tarantino at his most uninhibited displays more irony. That is how unbearable blatant the killing is depicted. Interestingly, Aja then continues to sustain this dizzying atmosphere of dread by having the subsequent killings in the farmstead taking place off screen: we can only hear the helpless screams of agony, with the occasional triumphant guttural glee of le tueur adding to the sense of helplessness. Aja clearly understands the proverbial rule of Horror filmmaking: sometimes what cannot be seen is more frightening than what can be.

Gory cinematic fun aside, some GLB viewers might truly find Haute Tension an offensive movie. As Marie is a lesbian who has the hots for Alex, and that the killer is a destroyer of the idyllic haven of the family, GLB viewers might read in the film an anti-establishment subtext which either conflates with or translates into an anti-lesbian/ homophobic subtext. My advice is: leave the brain, and the politics, at the doors. Do away with this incriminating potentiality, Haute Tension is a pretty effective, blood-drenched joy ride.

Haute Tension is a visceral assault on the senses, which tops itself with a surprise Fight Club-ish ending. To say more will spoil all the fun. Attentive viewers, however, might have pretty much guessed what's in stall for them early in the film, but it is this twist that ultimately propels Haute Tension from "good" to "terrific" and makes it one of the coolest horror film in years, in any language. Apparently, Aja is scheduled for a remake of Wes Craven's "The Hills Have Eyes." We await with tense anticipation.