Ahoy, squirts. Quint here with a very in-depth look at the upcoming NC-17 HAUTE TENSION. The below review reads like a thesis on the film and the genre. Say what you will, but this Josh Danger is very passionate. I don't fully agree with his take, feeling the film didn't earn its twist, but you know what they say about opinions! Beware of massive, massive, massive spoilers below. I'm not kidding. You'll feel like you've just watched the movie when you finish this. Spoiler-freaks rejoice! All others have been warned!

Hey Harry/Moriarty, I got a chance to see a special little film this evening, and wanted to share with you the incredible experience I had.

I don't know what the coverage on this film has been like on Aint It Cool. Its likely I read something about it, but didn't pay any attention to it at the time. I don't think I had ever heard of this film up until I opened up the program for this year's Nashville Independent Film Festival two weeks ago and saw that wicked looking image of Cécil De France standing amidst fog and grit, covered head to toe in blood and holding in her hands a gigantic fucking buzzsaw that is bigger than her torso right above the title.

But I knew as soon as I opened that program and saw that image, that I was going to fucking love HAUTE TENSION.

As I said, I'm not sure what you know about the film or what your coverage has been. It was released in France sometime last year, so its possibly old news for you. But as you may or may not know, Lions Gate is distributing it in America this fall. It is one of the three NC-17 films being released this year, along with THE DREAMERS, and YOUNG ADAM. I think the guy who introduced the film said it was the first NC-17 horror film in somewhere around 15 years.

And I can tell you, man, it fucking deserves the rating, and the attention it is most DEFINITELY going to be getting here in the states, when everybody sees it in the fall.

I must say, I've been a cinephile for most of my life (which hasn't necessarily been very long, but nevertheless) but have only spent the last year and a half absorbing myself in the plethora of cine-candy that exists in the horror genre. So I feel certain there are references to other horror films in this that went way over my head, outside of the Texas Chainsaw Masacre homage that was the climax of the film. My point being that I may not really be the best person to review this kind of film, seeing as how a great deal of my giddy enthusiasm for this film has to do, I'm sure, with my inexperience in the genre.

But I can tell you that I enjoyed it. I can tell you that there were many many elements to it that also got on my nerves, as well. I wish I could say I could tell you all this free of VERY serious plot spoilers, because I hate it when critics ruin movies by giving it away, but I can't. Not that any intelligent and remotely experienced movie geek couldn't tell you what the "surprises" in the film will inevitably be by the end of reel one (or for that matter, any one whose English teacher ever taut them the word "foreshadowing") but nevertheless, I am sorry for ruining it for some of you.

So if you would now like to see the movie when it comes out in the Fall or in your local art house, free of having "too much" revealed to you way back in May, I suggest you stop reading it now.

And I absolutely have to start off with the rest of the review with the major spoiler. And I have to, because the twist is the one thing about the film that pissed me off the most, and pretty much created other holes in the plot to tick me off with. So I want to get that out of the way.

Why is it, do you suppose, that filmmakers in the thriller genre STILL seem to be under the impression that "the killer is really the multiple personality of the protagonist" will surpise people? This little "twist" is so fucking over-used that it has now, in my personal and very humble opinion, completely surpassed the categorization of "cliche" and gone headlong directly into the category of "an insult to the intelligence of the audience."

(On a sidenote, that goes for ANY film that has a "surprise twist" at the end that the entire hour and a half of crap we sat through has been building up to. Seriously, people. If the only good part of your film is the surprise ENDING, then don't waste the millions of dollars you are spending to insult me and everyone else who payed money to see your shitty film. "Frailty," I'm talking to you.) Yes folks, I would have thought that Charlie Kauffman pointing it out to you in "Adaptation" in plain and simple English would have been enough for you to get the point. Its old. Especially when you pretty much establish that this is going to be the fact of it in the first five minutes of the film.

Its a basic cliche of the modern three-act thriller: pay attention to the very beginning, because it will till you what the twist at the ending is going to be. This film is no exception to that rule.

HOWEVER, it is an exception, in that, it doesn't lie to you to acheive a twist. Typically, I've guessed what the twist is by the end of reel one, and then I can't enjoy the film, and when the twist happens, I feel pissed off, like the filmmaker actually thought I was dumb enough not to see it coming.

With this film, I guessed what the twist was by the end of reel one, and then I THOUROUGHLY enjoyed the film, and not only that, but when the twist happened, it didn't dwell on it. It happened naturally within the course of the film, almost as if there wasn't really a point where you go "Ah, here's the twist." Of course, there IS that point, but it wasn't cheap, because the film actually gave the audience room enough to guess ahead of time throughout the course of the film. So instead of it being a moment in the film where time stops and the filmmaker shakes his ass in front of you while screaming, "HA HA, YOU FUCKING SUCKERS, I FOOLED YOU, BECAUSE YOU'RE STUPID!" (M. Night Shyamalan, I'm talking to you) it instead appears to those who have already guessed as a final verification of what they already suspect to be true, and to those who didn't see it coming, it becomes an effective moment that most filmmakers try depseratly to acheive by hamming it with loaded music and m! ontage, which is very light in the gradual revelation of the twist in this film.

But here's the important thing: The twist doesn't fucking matter. I mean, it DOES matter, because it opens up all kinds of holes ("Where the fuck did the Jeepers Creepers truck COME from, then?" "How did she, as the Killer, know the gas station attendee's name, who she's never met him before in her life?"). However, I was dead certain that it was a multiple personality storyline from Point A, and when the twist came I refused to believe it, rationalizing within myself that "Maybe the Killer has super-powers . . . " and other outlandish alternative solutions. Its not cause the twist is good, its because the MOVIE is good. I didn't want to believe it, because I was having way too much fun with the movie itself, and I didn't want it to descend into the pit by which all shitty thrillers must meet their end.

But that's where the difference between this film and, say, "Identity" comes into play. The "surprise" twist does not redefine the course of the film, and the film itself is not a pointless "beat the movie to guessing what the twist at the end is" game.

What makes this standout in all these respects from all the conventional thriller horror?

CAUSE ITS NOT FUCKING CONVENTIONAL THRILLER HORROR. IT IS BALLS-OUT, UNAPOLOGETIC, UNFORGIVING, RELENTLESS, GRUELING HORROR IN THE MOST PURE FORM ITS BEEN IN SINCE THE EIGHTIES.

And I'll be fucking damned if it isn't fun as hell. The guy who did the intro mentioned that the Special Make-Up and Gore FX guy used to work on the Fulci films. Don't know how accurate I have represented that fact, but I can fucking tell you this much: It shows. It shows in spades.

This is the film horror geeks have been waiting for. And I have to tell you, in addition to having so much goddamn fun, I was actually SCARED. The last time a movie SCARED me was when I saw "Alien" on video for the first time when I was Ten!

The gore and visceral violence is the most gruesome you'll see it getting, maybe for a long time without heading outside of your local multiplex. But some of the most horrific moments don't just come from the head severing, the throat slitting (holy hell, wait till you see the throat-slit effect) or the grissly menace of the mostly obscured Killer, but from things we don't see. The Killer goes after the little boy in a cornfield with a shotgun, which we observe (with our heroine/actual killer) from a window. The boy runs in, the Killer walks cooly in after him. Moments later, we see a flash inside the cornfield and a wisp of smoke. That was probably the most disturbing death for me. Gore I can handle with relative ease. Pairing the unapolagetic violence with a few moments where we're only afforded a few small details can be a deadly combination when utilized correctly, which this film does. And that includes the horrific use of a plank of wood with barbed-wire tied a! round it. You don't have to see the bludgeoning for it to fuck with you.

This film also proves two other asthetic theories:

1. Sound design is as important to the horror as the deaths. A few well placed sound effects, a throbbing whine at the right moment of suspense, all of it conveys far more fear to the audience than a bunch of screaming and roaring sounds, and can in fact make the screaming and roaring even more frightening by contrat.

2. Suspense is not dead. What passes off as suspense nowadays really isn't all that suspenseful. I was beginning it has given under, beneath the weight of endless and unaffective violence in the shit of today's horror flicks. But this film proves me wrong. This goes hand in hand with the use of sound in the film. The suspense in this film is painful. My bones still hurt, four hours later.

And oh yes, readers, in addition to being a splatter marathon of glorious preportions, this film does have more going for it. Things like subtext. Part of the reason the twist is so uninsulting despite itself is that it directly contributes to the development of the characters. The Killer is more than just the anger of the protagonist, embodied and put into action, or the homicidal side of the person that is incidentally unleashed. What the fuck ever. There's an entire Freudian scope to the twist of this film that sheds a kind of light on it that other filmmakers have so ineffectively tried in the past. And that means, my friends, plenty o' sexuality.

Some of it unappealing; for instance the severed head blowjob at the near beginning. If you weren't already a horror-convert, that part wasn't too much fun for anyone. I can say the extended moments of female masturbation did have a more positive effect on the predominantly male crowd in the movie theater. But what's cool about it (beyond the obvious adolescent reasons) which doesn't come together until later is that our protagonist is pleasuring herself at the same time the Killer begins his rampage on the Protagonist's girlfriend's family.

Oh yes, did I not mention our heroin is a lesbian? Yes, you see, her girlfriend cheated on her, rather unaplogetically, with a man. And its eating up at our heroine, who apparantly has a side of her that fantasizes about getting blowjobs with severed heads. The jealousy accumulates, mingling her fantasies with her realities (as far as I can tell, anyway) that ends up in the kill-crazy and ruthless rampage that we all enjoy so thouroughly.

Ack. I know I warned of spoilers, but I feel like I'm still giving far too much away.

Anyways, I suppose the moral of this film is, "If you are a girl who swings on both sides of the tree but are predominantly seeing one female who sees your relationship as something beyond a sexual friendship, and who has dreams about running from someone who, in actuality, is herself . . . don't go fucking other dudes."

And I wish I could write more, but I feel I have already said too much, and my body aches for my bed, at the moment.

In short, this is definitely a film for the cinephiles who've been patiently wafting through horrid shit in hopes of finding the one jewel that reminds them of why they love splatter exploitation so goddamn much in the first place.

Hope you all enjoy it when it comes out in the fall. I can promise you without hesitation that if you love your violence fake and your sex real, no matter what I've ruined for you, you're gonna fucking love this film.

really fuckin tired and officially scared of dykes,

Josh Danger