Two female students, Marie and Alex, set off to Alex's parent's secluded homestead in the country to relax and study. Come nightfall, Hell pulls up at the front door. Alex is now bound and gagged, taken off, with Marie eluding the intruder. Can she save her friend's life in time? Or is everything all that it seems... [TRAILER]

STEVEN SNYDER'S REVIEW

“High Tension” may start a bit shaky and feature an unfortunate - and homophobic – surprise twist, but by its final gruesome and horrific scene it has wrapped itself firmly around the senses of the audience. Here, in a most ambitious horror film that reminds us of the days before slasher titles co-opted the genre, director Alexandre Aja has crafted a meticulous, in-your-face real-time journey into the macabre that follows two women over the course of a single night.

During the film, this real-time approach seemed so daring and brazen. Only after did I stop to ask myself why it had elicited such a strong reaction.

The reason is that, as horror films have drifted away from real horror to exercises in grotesque shocks, the skill has gone missing from their creation. And as a deteriorating genre has gone the way of the recent “Darkness” and “Boogeyman,” I was impressed to encounter a horror film that, yes, started with the obligatory dark gravel road, moonlit cornfield and the creaky house at midnight, but then became something more terrifying in a far more realistic way.

As Alex (Maiwenn Le Besco) visits her parents at their country house, and brings along her good friend Marie (Cecile De France), a calm night is shattered when a rickety truck pulls up to the house’s front door, and a crazed maniac (Philippe Nahon) breaks in, kills the father and makes his way through the house, chaining up Alex and killing her brother and mother. Marie, upstairs, hears the screams, and quickly improvises a plan to escape and bring help to the house.

From here the film journeys to only three other locales, including a gas station, the woods and the back of this murderer’s truck – not necessarily in that order – and ends just after sunrise, on a blood-soaked highway.

It is a night from hell, but one that feels genuinely terrifying in a way unfamiliar to the heavily-manufactured slasher films committed solely to making audience jump.

In those films, the killers feel like supernatural entities, existing beyond the rules of the real world. Here, the killer is a big, old, wheezing man who moves at slow pace. His boots clunk on the wooden floors as he makes his casual, terrifying killing spree, and “High Tension” is not a flashy film, but one of deliberate actions and counter-actions, a series of chess matches where a more nimble, but outgunned woman tries to outthink a relentless, stronger killer.

And with this methodical balance of imminent danger, complex strategerie and an intense level of gore (it was previously rated NC-17), “High Tension” falls somewhere between the cleaner, purist days of Hitchcock and the more modern, gruesome direction of the genre. It’s the hybrid that hopefully more films will come to emulate, bringing a balance of scares and gore back into equilibrium.

Consider a scene in a bathroom, where Marie hides in a bathroom stall and manages to avoid being scene by the killer. She knows he’s smart and when she finally leaves, she slowly checks the bathroom stalls on her way out, expecting him to be there, waiting. Here, Aja inverts the expected formula, not only depicting Marie as an empowered and capable female hero, but switch the traditional roles of hunter and prey.

And this is why, despite “High Tension’s” ill-advised cop-out of a twist, it stands head and shoulders above any other summer scare-fest in recent memory.

Then again, this is also a French film, which may explain its deviation from Hollywood norms. While English has been awkwardly dubbed over most of the story’s early dialogue, I’m still glad the film made its way here in any form, and that Lions Gate Films had the guts to put it on screens during the coveted summer months.

It’s that rare, genuinely creepy film that does not shock in bursts, but scares in waves. Later that night, you’ll still be scrutinizing those nightly noises, listening for wheezing – or a power saw.

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