This will contain spoilers not just for this movie, but Fight Club too.
To this film's credit it has some decent atmosphere and once in a while lives up to its title. However, everything that is wrong here far outweighs the good.
On a simplistic level, the language is ridiculous here. Boy-like Marie and her horse-faced friend Alex are off in the country and dubbed horribly into English. But only sometimes. Randomly, some of the movie is in French, which I guess is to give the impression some people really are French and some aren't? Or not. I have no idea, but it doesn't matter. By the time you hear Marie yell "Alex" for the millionth time you'll probably wish the whole thing was dubbed.
The people in the film may as well be replaced with robots that have processors working on about 64K of programming for all the diversity they're showing. I guess they have human emotions, probably, but only insofar as I assume that about everyone human. In this movie, everyone picked 2 emotions out of a sack and had to stick with them for the whole movie.
I have heard people call this movie brilliant and perhaps they did so with a straight face. I have also heard the director valiantly try to explain every one of the incalculable plot holes in the movie. And his explanation works with one caveat. Foe those not in the know, this movie gives us a rehash of a familiar idea, a multiple personality disorder. When the twist is revealed anyone with an ounce of sense will start to question how on Earth it's even remotely possible. And honestly it isn't unless you accept the director's explanation - the whole story is being told as the nut job killer would have told it, so everything makes sense in the nutball killer's head.
Well, guess what? That's dirty pool. Ever read a story where at the end it was all a dream? That's just as lame as what the director did here. If the whole story must be filtered through the insane killer's perspective, and it must be or it doesn't make any sense and can't make any sense, then what's the point of the whole story? There's no ground for it to be structured on, why should I even believe that any character in the movie is real? How can I know what the pick and choose to be real? The only sensible answer is that the stuff that makes sense is real and everything that doesn't make sense is from the killer's whacked perspective. That's also a horribly stupid answer and it's bad story telling. The story couldn't work logically so they made it illogical.
The director also thought he was being clever giving subtle clues that maybe Marie was a little nutty herself and that's great, but it's not clever when the killer is introduced as clearly a totally separate entity. You can't have it both ways. At least in Fight Club you never see anyone speak to both Brad Pitt and Ed Norton at any one time, they are never together with extra people and recognized as separate entities and when the flashbacks show they're the same it makes sense. In High Tension's flashbacks, they avoid the non-sensical moments, like the car chase, like Alex getting the knife, like the entire scene at the gas station, none of which work in the one person scenario unless we accept the director's weak explanation that it's all the killer's perspective.
And if it is all the killer's perspective, why not have a chorus line of dancing goats? We can't trust anything we're seeing anyway, so who cares? In a nutshell, that single flaw is why the movie can't work at all. In an all or nothing reality scenario, High Tension gives you nothing and that's the only way it can make sense.
Possibly worse yet is the fact that this movie may as well be 100 other movies. Cut out the failed attempt at a plot twist and what do you have? Every slasher movie I've ever seen. There's nothing new here and certainly nothing scary with scenes that are obviously inspired by earlier films and nothing but gore to keep it afloat. Well I can mix my own corn syrup and red food coloring at home, thanks, and I don;t have to read subtitles half the time to do it.
The movie tried and it failed. If the director needs to constantly try to explain himself, he failed. The story should work on its own merits and this movie doesn't. It's only worth watching if you want to see how to totally butcher a twist ending into something that makes no sense at all.
To this film's credit it has some decent atmosphere and once in a while lives up to its title. However, everything that is wrong here far outweighs the good.
On a simplistic level, the language is ridiculous here. Boy-like Marie and her horse-faced friend Alex are off in the country and dubbed horribly into English. But only sometimes. Randomly, some of the movie is in French, which I guess is to give the impression some people really are French and some aren't? Or not. I have no idea, but it doesn't matter. By the time you hear Marie yell "Alex" for the millionth time you'll probably wish the whole thing was dubbed.
The people in the film may as well be replaced with robots that have processors working on about 64K of programming for all the diversity they're showing. I guess they have human emotions, probably, but only insofar as I assume that about everyone human. In this movie, everyone picked 2 emotions out of a sack and had to stick with them for the whole movie.
I have heard people call this movie brilliant and perhaps they did so with a straight face. I have also heard the director valiantly try to explain every one of the incalculable plot holes in the movie. And his explanation works with one caveat. Foe those not in the know, this movie gives us a rehash of a familiar idea, a multiple personality disorder. When the twist is revealed anyone with an ounce of sense will start to question how on Earth it's even remotely possible. And honestly it isn't unless you accept the director's explanation - the whole story is being told as the nut job killer would have told it, so everything makes sense in the nutball killer's head.
Well, guess what? That's dirty pool. Ever read a story where at the end it was all a dream? That's just as lame as what the director did here. If the whole story must be filtered through the insane killer's perspective, and it must be or it doesn't make any sense and can't make any sense, then what's the point of the whole story? There's no ground for it to be structured on, why should I even believe that any character in the movie is real? How can I know what the pick and choose to be real? The only sensible answer is that the stuff that makes sense is real and everything that doesn't make sense is from the killer's whacked perspective. That's also a horribly stupid answer and it's bad story telling. The story couldn't work logically so they made it illogical.
The director also thought he was being clever giving subtle clues that maybe Marie was a little nutty herself and that's great, but it's not clever when the killer is introduced as clearly a totally separate entity. You can't have it both ways. At least in Fight Club you never see anyone speak to both Brad Pitt and Ed Norton at any one time, they are never together with extra people and recognized as separate entities and when the flashbacks show they're the same it makes sense. In High Tension's flashbacks, they avoid the non-sensical moments, like the car chase, like Alex getting the knife, like the entire scene at the gas station, none of which work in the one person scenario unless we accept the director's weak explanation that it's all the killer's perspective.
And if it is all the killer's perspective, why not have a chorus line of dancing goats? We can't trust anything we're seeing anyway, so who cares? In a nutshell, that single flaw is why the movie can't work at all. In an all or nothing reality scenario, High Tension gives you nothing and that's the only way it can make sense.
Possibly worse yet is the fact that this movie may as well be 100 other movies. Cut out the failed attempt at a plot twist and what do you have? Every slasher movie I've ever seen. There's nothing new here and certainly nothing scary with scenes that are obviously inspired by earlier films and nothing but gore to keep it afloat. Well I can mix my own corn syrup and red food coloring at home, thanks, and I don;t have to read subtitles half the time to do it.
The movie tried and it failed. If the director needs to constantly try to explain himself, he failed. The story should work on its own merits and this movie doesn't. It's only worth watching if you want to see how to totally butcher a twist ending into something that makes no sense at all.