High Tension

The film that announced writer-director Alexandre Aja as a major new talent at the forefront of international horror cinema, High Tension remains a brutal achievement in the modern evolution of survivor horror and an early example of the violence and visceral chaos associated with the torture porn movement. The fever dream with which the film commences foreshadows the long nightmare it brazenly later sustains. For best friends Marie and Alexia college exams are not far away. In order to find some peace to study Alexia invites Marie to spend the weekend with her family at their remote farmhouse. The idyll only lasts for so long. The arrival of a stranger at the front door wielding a cutthroat razor sets in motion a chain of terrorizing events no one sees coming. Aja brings his scrupulous knowledge of the seminal masterpieces of the genre and runs riot with an outlook bleakly attuned to the formally unsettling approach. As the deranged killer escalates the grizzly mayhem there's little hope of anyone coming out unscathed. "It's a movie that needs to be seen by all horror fans" notes Dread Central, because it serves as a reminder of just how good a slasher film can be. (Accent Film Entertainment)