Haute Tension (aka High Tension in the United States) is part of a retrospective trend in horror film, but it’s cuts above its recent fellow genre entries, both in intention and achievement. Retro-horror movies have proven to be an ambiguous idea in recent genre history. It was a great notion to go back to basics and try and recapture some of the elemental terror found in the classics from the 1970s. But it’s a shame that the output so far has generally been pedestrian, seemingly only directed with an eye for quick scares but devoid of any real vision or feeling for place and character. What most of them failed to notice about the originals was that for every jump scare, there is a lengthy preceding sequence during which the atmosphere is carefully created to ensure that the shock, when it comes, is more than just a reflex followed by a giggle. Movies like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes were more concerned with unnerving and thoroughly disorientating their audiences so that they begin to question their assumptions about the outside world. The throwbacks of recent times however seem to have had precious little on their minds, other than giving the audience a few brief shakes.

Certainly, Haute Tension has its fair share of well-timed jolts and enough bloody effluence and carnage to fill an abattoir. Fans of blood and gore will have little to complain about, and subscribers to all forms of inventive demise will be elated to hear that the movie features, among many other delights, a method of decapitation that’s absolutely unique in horror history. But it’s as a study of terrifyingly intense emotional need that the movie really delivers the horror it promises, and the admittedly debatable ending, which could defensibly be dismissed as unsatisfactorily gimmicky, could also be seen as an entirely logical development of this side of the movie.

My synopsis is going to be deliberately brief and fractured because Haute Tension is one of those movies that really works best if you don’t know what to expect. The premise is simple. Alex (Maiwenn), a pretty and flirtatious young woman has invited her reserved, virginal and sexually confused friend Marie (De France) to her family home for a holiday. Arriving at the house, set in the middle of the French countryside, the two girls quickly settle in. But things are not as peaceful as they seem. An old truck with someone inside is parked a short distance from the house. He drives off after a while but returns later that night to invade the house, kill most of its occupants and abduct Alex. Marie hides, manages to escape the killing spree, and goes after the killer to save her friend.

Alexandre Aja’s direction is astute. The movie is construed in a heavily stylized way with swift pans, fast cuts and sinister tracking shots. Although there are not too many direct filmic references, the shadow of many classic horror movies hangs over the movie. A slight weakness is that there isn’t a great deal of originality of conception or direction in some of the longer sequences. They’re very well executed but it’s only the intensity of his pacing and the extremity of the violence that keeps the audience from thinking they’ve seen it all before. The use of sound on the other hand is awesome. Aja knows how to employ sound to unsettle his audience, showing that has obviously learned from Argento and Hitchcock.

Acting performances of the three leads are superb. Cecile De France has a nightmare of an acting job trying to make her character of Marie believable, but she achieves this by immediately indicating that her character is disconnected from the exterior world on many levels. She seems to live in a fantasy world where she can be the lover and protector of Alex and continually deny herself knowledge of the horrible reality of her situation. De France manages to convincingly relay both Marie’s compulsive obsession for love and acceptance and of her poignant desperation when she discovers that neither can come her way. Her lesbian inclinations are indicated early in the film, but never become cliché, even when her feelings towards Marie become embarrassingly obvious. If Maiwenn gets less sympathy during much of the film, it’s because her character Alex isn’t so roundly painted and the story requires her to be a hysterical wreck for much of the movie’s running time. Philippe Nahon is a memorable creation as the killer; first terrifyingly silent, much in the vein of Leatherface, then, abruptly, vivid and lascivious. The movie categorically refuses to explain his character’s motives, which works very effective.

The narrative twist which hits the viewer about twenty minutes before the ending credits roll is, as I already mentioned, debatable and a possible issue for some viewers. But this twist does something remarkable: it strengthens the emotional pull of the movie and what begins as a horrifying revelation becomes genuinely affecting. The clues that make the twist work are carefully planted throughout the movie, making a second viewing an experience very different to the first. But whereas the twist in many movies in this subgenre is simply there to give the audience one last shock, the turn of events in Haute Tension is significant in terms of the characters and the way they behave. The result is a movie that begins as a very well made slasher movie and ends as a horribly painful and oddly believable love story. The pains that people go through when suffering from unrequited and, worse, never to be requited love has rarely been etched in such blunt terms, as is the case here.

But the movie also works very well as a solid slasher. One of the things that make a slasher really work is a complete lack of sentimentality. All bets are off and no holds barred, there is nothing the killer won’t do for the sake of whatever it is he’s after. The unrelenting agony, both for characters and audience, and the lack of emotion that the killer demonstrates, are particularly disturbing. If he would express some emotional response, even pleasure, it might somehow be less unsettling, but his behavior is near clinical. The great Gianetto De Rossi’s special effects are a thing of marvel throughout. His decapitation sequence deserves a standing ovation as one of the greatest make-up achievements ever confined to celluloid, and the gradual deterioration of Marie into a mess of cuts and bruises is a showcase of true mastery and skill.

Aja clearly knows his trade, and while there are certainly nods to the classics, he doesn’t use his knowledge in an ironic manner. And with the superb cinematography and unsettling sound mix, one could argue that this movie is technically more accomplished than the shockers it’s paying tribute to. But it’s also, oddly enough, a convincing and intense love story.