To get out of the city for some quiet study time, friends Marie (Cécile De France) and Alex (Maïwenn Le Besco) travel to Alex's parents house out in the country. Upon the night of their arrival, a mysterious man driving a beat up truck pulls up to the house with only one intention - to kill everyone in the house without any apparent reason. Now Marie and Alex must do whatever it takes to fight for their lives. So is the basic plot for Haute Tension (aka High Tension, Switchblade Romance), a magnificently visceral slasher/survival film of a calibre that hasn't been seen in many years.

With stylish, no-nonsense direction from Alexandre Aja, convincing acting and some brutally graphic and inventive gore effects from Italian make-up legend Giannetto De Rossi (The Beyond, Cannibal Apocalypse, The Gates Of Hell and more), Haute Tension brilliantly distills the highs of the horror genre into a truly terrorifying film that speeds by at a nerve racking, brisk pace leaving no time to slow things down for padded character development or plot filler.

Like some of the best horror films before it (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween and Night Of The Living Dead for example), Haute Tension works so well because it's antagonists only real motive at a basic level is to kill human beings and its protagonists only motive is to avoid death at all cost. It's that fear of death and the way a horror movie successfully gets that fear under its viewer's skin that places a horror movie at the top of the heap. And, boy, do they die in this movie (the staircase/beheading scene a stand out among many), with the blood flowing more than generously and at times spraying directly into the camera.

My only small (very small mind you) complaint is the twist ending. I, as other viewers may, find it an unneeded twist that does not change the tone or outcome of the film, yet makes the viewer have to go back and rethink what should have been just a straightforward, balls out horror movie - a twist that fills in yet reveals minor plot holes at the same time. At the same time, the twist ending won't ultimately affect your opinion of the film as a whole, it just doesn't seem to have any significant purpose.

That aside, Haute Tension is a horror film of the highest calibre, a terrifying bloodbath and one hell of an entertaining popcorn flick. Lions Gates has picked this French import up for North American distribution for later this year and whether or not we see a theatrical or just a DVD release, when this officially hits our shores it's the horror movie to beat for best of 2004.

Review based on uncut version. (Derek Carlson, 4/18/04)

Directed By: Alexandre Aja.
Written By: Alexandre Aja, Gregory Levasseur.

Starring: Cécile De France, Maïwenn Le Besco, Philippe Nahon, Franck Khalfoun.

aka: High Tension; Switchblade Romance.