If you plan to go away with your close friend to study in an old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere surrounded by miles of cornfields, where doors creak, lights flicker, and creepy dolls play even creepier music — don’t. But Alexandre Aja insists that we do, so let’s talk about his 2003 film, High Tension. The story surrounds two girls, Marie and Alex, as they travel to Alex’s parent’s house in the country to do some studying. We get an extremely brief introduction to Alex’s family, and Marie begins to settle into her new quarters for the weekend. But before either of them can say, “let’s start studying,” a crazed man who looks a lot like Quint from Jaws shows up and starts murdering the family one by one. Chaos naturally ensues, and there are chases through the cornfield, tiptoeing around the creaky house, French Connection style car chasing, and blood… lots and lots of blood.
BIG SPOILERS AHEAD…
The film’s central character is Marie, a loner of sorts, who is awoken by a dream where she describes “being chased by herself” (keep that in mind for later). Marie is not your typical final girl; she plays a passive role for most of the plot as the horrors all seem to be happening around her. She also has very little interaction with anyone other than Alex and doesn’t take much interest in her family. Horrific things start happening pretty quickly, and even though they are brutal and difficult to watch, there is still an emptiness and lack of empathy felt for them. Some of the more graphic elements were effective in place of emotion, mainly creating the shock value that the New French Extremity movement is known for. This brings me to the most troubling and problematic aspect of this film… the twist ending.
Cinema has for years had a nasty little habit of either overtly or inadvertently writing queer characters as villains in movies. From the scathing and nearly-openly gay Dr. Pretorius in Bride of Frankenstein, to the ruthlessly flamboyant Scar from The Lion King, and yes… to Marie, the murderous lesbian from High Tension. It is made clear early on that Marie is single, and the filmmakers made an obvious choice of distinguishing Marie and Alex by their clothing and hairstyles. Alex’s long hair and floral patterns evoke feminine straightness, whereas Marie’s short hair and nondescript clothes evoke a queerness or “otherness” about her. Marie’s feelings for Alex are finally made clear when she can be seen watching Alex shower from an open window as she sits outside the house smoking a cigarette. This would all be pretty superficial characterizations and maybe not as important to viewers if the big twist hadn’t been that Marie has been the psychopathic killer all this time (remember the dream where Marie was “chasing herself?”). I don’t know what audiences felt at the time that this came out, but I can tell you that I let out an audible groan when that reveal occurred. Time and time again, this “twist” of sorts pops up and continues this false narrative of queer people as being sneaky, manipulative, obsessive, and even dangerous. Marie will stop at nothing to be with Alex, to the point of murdering her entire family and nearly disfiguring Alex’s face with a circular saw unless she told Marie that she loved her. High Tension is not the first or last movie to perpetuate this stereotype. Still, the message is loud and clear: “don’t be friends with a queer person because they will ultimately become obsessed with you and brutally murder everyone you love to be with you.” Not the best message to be sending, intentional or not.
However, there are glimpses of greatness here from director Alexandre Aja who would later go onto direct films like the 2007 remake of The Hills Have Eyes, Mirrors, Piranha 3D, and Crawl. He clearly understood how to create suspense, expertly demonstrated by a scene at a gas station around the halfway point where Marie is attempting to get help from the killer and is trying not to be seen by him. I assure you, you won’t want to take your eyes off the screen for the entire duration of this sequence. Aja even sets us up perfectly with a creepy location and a classic independent filmmaking atmosphere. Top that off with a knack for capping off his suspenseful scenes with an equally shocking and blood-curdling murder that looks so real, you’d think it was. (Shoutout to special effects and make-up artist Giannetto De Rossi for the amazing effects.)
However, I couldn’t help but feel that these shocks and scares were just too few and far between scenes that either don’t go anywhere or don’t make sense once you realize what’s really going on in the story. My feelings on this are pretty torn, as the suspense and special gore effects are really effective, and the atmosphere is perfect for a low-budget home invasion horror film. But the somewhat dull opening doesn’t give the viewer much to hold onto once the terrorizing begins, and the problematic twist ending is cringeworthy and upsetting by today’s standards. So mostly what we’re left with is that great gas station scene, which I think could be recut and made into its own short film. Lucky for us, Alexandre Aja went on to direct some much better films that are more worth checking out than High Tension.
High Tension is streaming on Shudder starting March 1st.
