|
HIGH TENSION (2003)
It's about ¾ awesome, and ¼ the worst movie ever Fitting, I suppose, that I saw this movie back-to-back with the sequel to the movie I called "the latest victim of Shitty Ending Syndrome". For most of its length High Tension is a rip-snorter, a bloody, merciless death machine with great gore, hair-raising unmusical music, and piano-wire suspense. Then, something happened. When the police pressed PLAY on that surveillance tape, I said aloud "I better not see what I think I'm gonna see." And oh yeah, I saw it. And from that point on, High Tension becomes the worst movie ever. In the attempt to blow my mind with the mega-twist that re-writes the logic of all that came before, instead all that is achieved is to completely evaporate the plausibility of all that came before. How'd that phone call get made, and why doesn't French 911 have caller ID? How'd that car crash happen? Even the little things require, essentially, that the viewer re-write the plot as he or she sees fit (what's going on in the back of the truck? Why the scene where the guy pleasures himself with a severed head? What was the gas station guy looking at? What was ANY of this mayhem for, when you could've just asked her out?). Fuck. Fuck! I'm pissed off. It is, or should be, the producer's job to step in and tell the director, dude, stop turning your great movie into the worst movie ever. Still, those first three quarters are an ass-kick. And I do mean a kick in the ass, from the hoof of an angry and unusually powerful ass. The plot of this movie up to the Big Twist has been said to have been plagiarized from the only one of Dean Koontz's million books that didn't rip off Firestarter - titled, appropriate enough, Intensity. I read it, but don't remember anything about it. I do know this: High Tension has two college girls go to the country home of one of the girls' family, and then some redneck hillbilly trucker (I guess even France has redneck hillbilly truckers) comes by, slaughters the family and kidnaps the daughter, and it's up to the friend to rescue her, if she can survive long enough to do so. Simple, straightforward, brutal thriller stuff. Hardly needs a "mind blowing" plot twist. Most movies don't need it, but it seems like every thriller gets one these days, and I think this might be the worst one I've ever seen. It even throws in a "car that won't start" scene, just to make sure the task of turning this movie to shit isn't a half-assed job. Did I mention that the last quarter of this movie is the worst quarter of a movie ever? (c) Brian J. Wright 2005 BACK TO THE H's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE |