Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Best friends Marie and Alexia decide to spend a quiet weekend at Alexia's parents' secluded farmhouse. But on the night of their arrival, the girls' idyllic getaway turns into an endless night of horror.
High Tension is a viscerally effective New French Extremity slasher that delivers relentless, brutal tension through its first two acts, anchored by strong practical effects and Alexandre Aja's confident, gritty cinematography that recalls classic American slashers while feeling distinctly raw and European. Marie-Cécile Brossolet carries the film physically and emotionally, grounding the survival horror in something resembling genuine dread. However, the film is critically undermined by its twist ending, which introduces a Fight Club-style unreliable narrator device that retroactively creates massive logical plot holes — objects are moved, a severed head is held, events occur that are physically impossible if the twist is true. This collapses narrative credibility entirely for many viewers. Cinematographically it punches well above average with Maxime Alexandre's dark, claustrophobic framing, but as a piece of plotting it is severely flawed. Its novelty lies primarily in its brutal intensity and the New French Extremity movement's ethos rather than a truly original concept.