Jeremy:
Alexandre Aja’s breakout film, ‘High Tension’, was also, it seems in recent years, to have been a precursor to a new movement. Stylistic horror has become a very apparent genre in French filmmaking, and, with recent films like ‘Ils’, ‘A L’interieur’, and ‘Frontiere(s)’, the American market of filmgoers is becoming inundated with them. But, as far as can be gauged, ‘High Tension’ was the first.
The film, released in France in 2003, got a wide, American release in Summer of 2005, and made $3.6 million at the US box office. Early trailers for the film showed fans of horror a style that had not been seen for a number of years. The last 10 to 20 years of horror films had lost that gritty, dirty feel that seemed to be lost in the cookie cutter Slasher films of the early to mid ’80s. There was no dialogue in the trailer, only the moody sounds of Sonic Youth’s cover of The Carpenters’ ‘Superstar’. Casual moviegoers were probably even unaware the film was foreign. What they got, however, was a tightly crafted, very suspenseful horror film that would not soon be forgotten. Continue reading The Movie Melting Pot … ‘High Tension’ (France, 2003)