Hey folks, Harry here... I loved this film. I absolutely agree that the last 20 minutes takes a vertical change in direction that in no way makes sense, but I hold... a movie sometimes doesn't have to make sense. Sometimes a movie can just go insane for no earthly logical sense. I believe the reason and final character kiss between the two surviving characters was the reason for that vertical leap in logic, and ya know... when a movie is that penetrating with its twists... I was just howling in the lunacy of that audacious leap. ABSURD. But only the sort of thing you'd find in a crazy French Horror Film. Vive la France!

Hey Harry-

With all the talk around such lofty subjects as ROTK (which I loved) and "The Passion" (which I didn't), I thought I'd give your readers a review of one of the other BNAT films.

At about oh-shit-is-that-the-time thirty in the morning, we got smacked with this French horror film. Moriarty introduced this movie as a brutal, unrelenting ride. I have no argument with such a characterization of this film. Brutal it is. Unrelenting it is. While it finally fails as a compelling story, I found myself anxious and excited throughout. The atmosphere of the film is perfect - the story just keeps getting in the way.

How do you talk about this film without potential spoilers? I can't think of a good way so reader be warned, you may learn more than you wanted to know.

Essentially, this is a serial killer film with a twist. I wouldn't call it a slasher film because it feels to realistic for that. Jason Vorhees and Freddy Kreuger aren't sexual predators, they are simply predators. The antagonist in this film is a sexual predator who looks and acts like we have been led to believe a true serial killer would look and act. He is a brutal and violent creature whose only purpose in life is to act out his creepy sexual desires.

The twist is the fact that when he shows up to collect his next victim, he doesn't manage to kill off everyone in her home. A friend from college has joined the family for the weekend and end up trying to bring down the serial killer.

The issue I have with the movie is that this friend is alternately really smart and really stupid. At times she makes the right decisions to keep herself hidden from the killer in the house and at other times she fails to make a stand when success was almost assured. She is an annoying combination of dumb slasher chick and smart horror chick.

Near the end of the film, a reveal is made that is meant to explain her behavior. So it does. It very nearly made me like the film until I started to think about the rest of the film and realized that the entire story had just ceased to make any sense. It was the kind of "gotcha" ending that the film hadn't earned. "The Sixth Sense" earned it's ending and even made it possible for a smart viewer to figure it out. "Switchblade Romance" gives its audience no clues to the direction it will eventually take.

More to the point, "The Sixth Sense" became a more interesting film because you could go back and look at the slow reveal of the truth where the story of "Switchblade Romance" unravelled.

Now I have to admit that as a parent, I react strongly to the killing of children when I feel it is gratouitous. In this movie, there is a ten year old boy who is a victim and my issue was not that he was killed, but that he was in the film in the first place. He was the brother of the killers target and was over ten years her junior. That such age disparities exist in families is absolutely true. But why did this family have a ten year old child? Was it because some families do?

No.

It was because the killer is that much more horrific if he has no problem killing a ten year old boy.

As another side complaint, what was with the name "Switchblade Romance?" The literal translation of the French title, "Haute Tension," is "High Tension." That title actually fits the film far more than "Switchblade Romance." It didn't improve or hurt the movie, it just annoyed me.

Because the film looks so good and does keep the tension on, I was pulling for it the whole way through. Yes, I was frustrated when the protagonist made choices that were wrong simply because it felt like she had to make the wrong choices for the movie to continue. For a while, however, the atmosphere of the film was so effective, I allowed myself to accept these narrative gaps.

It was only when the film tried to explain her behavior as something other than a narrative necessity that the film lost all credibility.

It is rare that the ending of a film so completely destroys the experience. You have to marvel at it. I had been thinking all along that the movie would take a different tack that would have been more interesting and even a lot more creepy. All the plot twist did for me was to make the rest of the film an impenetrable mess.

Yours in cold blood - Petsnakereggie.