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Gore house: Bloody ‘Tension’ shows lots of grisly Gaul
By CRAIG OUTHIER
Get Out

If “High Tension” proves anything, it's that French filmmakers can make slasher flicks just as rambunctious and eye-burningly grotesque as their American counterparts.

And that might be an understatement. The fact is, writer/director Alexandre Aja (“Furia”) chops, stabs and cuts with a giddy, gore-soaked explicitness that American audiences haven't seen since the cult-horror heyday of “2000 Maniacs” and “I Spit on Your Grave” (1981). Jean Renoir, it ain't.

Aja — the son of a prominent Parisian film critic — clearly favors classics of a different sort: Those involving randy college students, faceless madmen and exotic forms of dismemberment. The familiar outline involves a French coed named Marie (Cécile De France) who accompanies classmate Alex (Maiwenn Le Besco) to stay with Alex's parents in a remote country farmhouse for a weekend of study and home-cooked meals.

For the U.S. release of “High Tension,” Alex and her family have been recast as American ex-pats, which allows much of the dialogue to take place in English, albeit with a spectacularly bad dub. The effect is both distracting and pointless — American audiences having proved their willingness to tolerate subtitles by making “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” a hit. The distributor, Lions Gate, should have had more faith.

In any case, the subtitling becomes moot when a dastardly, heavy-breathing fix-it man (Philippe Nahon) stages an invasion of the home and butchers Alex's entire family. From that point on, the characters do most of their communicating with axes and razor wire, culminating in a punishingly tense sequence where Marie — who successfully hides from the killer — secretes herself in the back of his van alongside Alex, who's bound and gagged and destined for death unless Marie can save her.

“High Tension” isn't purely perverse; it also packs moments of crisp, electric suspense that dangle over you like well-polished daggers, poised to fall at any time. And it's stylish — Aja uses white noise and other jarring sound elements to suggest an atmosphere of supreme psychological torment. Unfortunately, he also feels obligated to include a twist ending that holds up poorly to scrutiny, making “High Tension” feel somewhat fixed.

With her toned bod and pixie haircut, De France makes for a robust if contradictory heroine, full of ambiguous, pent-up sexuality. In the world of slasher cinema, there's no better catalyst for bloodshed.