Review Rough Drafts (Letterboxd)/Aja's High Tension (2003)

 When I look over my reviews for Letterboxd, I have planned to keep them really small. In order to do that, I have to trim the fat, which is like cutting off limbs...I hurt doing so. So I thought I would use my blog occasionally to add reviews in their complete drafts before I trimmed off the limbs for Letterboxd.

I looked over Haute Tension (2003) after posting it on Letterboxd and decided to trim it down. I really want to try and keep all my blurbs to about two paragraphs. So this is Alexandre Aja's "High Tension" in its complete form before edit:

There are some who fight with you about how the twist ending actually works and takes the film from just a gritty, nihilistic, graphic, bloodthirsty, savage French slasher to a whole other level. That the vile, ugly monster side of Marie is made manifest in the form of this grotesque, filthy, dirty-fingered, balding, scraggly-haired, repulsive, cold-blooded, work-suited trucker in a Mad Max fury road van when she gets aroused at the passion for friend, Alex. I can totally see why many consider that homophobic and wrong-headed. I tried to play Devil's Advocate and just isolate Marie's lesbianism as the response towards her Hyde emerging, but I still personally feel that was just ill-advised and, in retrospect, robs this film of some of its power, leaving behind even more bad taste than its violence already had.

As far as the impact of the violence, the film is brutal with a head just forced off by a dresser when trapped in a stairwell, another enduring a nasty neck slice gash that spurts blood all over the place (her popping up to breathe while nearly dead on the floor is ghastly), a service station attendant "getting the ax", and a motorist receiving a spinning saw right into his torso when he can't get the car to start. I think the camera returning to a cornfield to show us the shotgunned body of a boy is downright heinous and wholly unnecessary. Aja already told us what happened to him with a gunshot lighting up and sounding off from a distance and the killer following the tyke who is looking for his sister. I get some like when child violence is included for the potency, but I'm just not personally a fan of that shit.

Favorite scene:

Marie taking a rock, barbwired 2X4, and plastic wrap to the face of the killer - so basically one side of her personality trying to kill the monster side of her personality that seems to have surfaced like Hyde against Jekyll's wishes

There is a homage to when Janet Leigh falls out of the bathtub when pulling on the shower curtain as the camera catches her face drop to the floor with the right eye/side of the face when the axed clerk is killed that I thought was effective. Definitely, this is still highly influential and a major catalyst in the rise of French Extreme.