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80A movie that wants you to squirm in your seat and judged by that standard, it works brilliantly.
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75Like all horror films, High Tension builds to a final, sobering flash of chaos that settles all scores. Some viewers will hate Aja's movie for its end-game reveal; others will love it for the very same reason.
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A chainsaw-cut above recent entries in the genre: a pure, unapologetic, unironic homage to the likes of "Friday the 13th" that respectfully salutes all the old shtick.
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75But purely as an exercise in style, this movie has its moments.
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75The film revels in blood and gore, but this is not just a run-of-the-mill splatter film. There's a lot of intelligence in both the script and in Alexandre Aja's direction.
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67I was annoyed by Levasseur and Aja's desertion of their tense, simple plot in favor of tedious "plot twists" that could, frankly, use a rest. It's a waste of a good first half. (Grade: A- for first hour, C- thereafter.)
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63Even if you don't buy the ending, however, High Tension makes for ghoulish, sick fun, and Aja, who is already at work on a remake of Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes, clearly takes this horror stuff very seriously. The genre can always use a few more like him.
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60The first two thirds of the screenplay by Aja and cowriter Gregory Levasseur is a relentless exercise in bare-bones nastiness.
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60While the acting is fine and the direction accomplished, the real stars of the film are editor Baxter and cinematographer Maxime Alexandre. Forfeiting a gold star is whoever haphazardly dubbed the film, simply giving up about halfway through.
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60Manages--before faltering under the weight of its own pretensions--to be pretty scary.
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60Deftly juggles gore and suspense, and punchline holds an intellectual frisson or two for fans of gender-role speculation, but basically this is one more horror pic on the distinguished road already trodden by "Texas Chain Saw Massacre," "Maniac" and the like.
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50For all this, there is one unalloyed good thing to be said for High Tension. When all is said and done, it really does live up to its title. In every other way it's trash, but that truth-in-advertising aspect is a major weight to throw into the mix.
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50Borderline reprehensible, High Tension is a living nightmare, but then, why else would you see it?
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50Horror fans should see this, at least in geeky admiration for what it pulls off, but in the long run it's no more than a crisp footnote to genre history.
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50Though staged with technical skill and unflinching brutality, it's an awfully familiar-looking slaughter filled with moments on loan from other movies.
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50For much of its duration the film is a case of intense fare done with an undeniable effectiveness and ingenuity -- until it lurches into a deplorable surprise twist.
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50By turns unnerving and numbing.
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42The latest reshuffling of "Chainsaw" tropes.
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42This film is satisfied merely to wallow in women in peril, cinematic sadism and the spectacle of violent death and dismemberment.
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40That outrageous third-act reveal proves to be a major deal-breaker.
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40Stylistically thrilling but ultimately tedious French import.
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40High Tension often feels like a '70s exploitation movie in the best sense; unfortunately, the ending is so bad that it mars everything that comes before.
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40It can only be said that if you like this sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing you like.
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38One of the ugliest movies I've ever seen. Even though it occurs mostly in the dark, the open flesh wounds are both graphic and implausible.
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38The horrible anticipation he [Aja] builds is derailed by a gimmick that makes the twist in, say, ''Fight Club" seem perfectly logical. To say more would be to ruin the movie, and why should I do that when its own makers have done it for you?
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30If old-fashioned jolts are what you're after, this nasty piece of merchandise delivers. But so does electroshock.
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25The philosopher Thomas Hobbes tells us life can be "poor, nasty, brutish and short." So is this movie.
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25Serial killing and other insanity in the French countryside, with ineptly dubbed English dialogue.
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10Such a bizarre movie that it has completely occupied my thinking for days. Not because it's a good movie, mind you. It's more like the equivalent of a botched tooth extraction with a coat hanger. Some bloody shard remains stuck in an inflamed, fleshy part of my psyche, and it's going to take some serious tugging and tearing to root it out.
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0The movie is a model of multinational incompetence.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 13 out of 29
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Mixed: 5 out of 29
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Negative: 11 out of 29
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