High Tension

An extremely well-made, very grisly and ultimately dishonest slasher film that's too clever for its own good.

Director Alexandre Aja, who wrote this with Gregory Levasseur, doesn't have a gift for horror suspense so much as a compleat geek knowledge of all the superior scare flicks that have preceded High Tension.

You have to give it to the filmmakers for their contempt of convention: no foreplay, no teasing, no steady buildup of dread, just a knock on the door and the slaughterer is there.

A lame exercise, delivering shameless thrills at the expense of logic and genuine suspense.

Very bloody, sometimes difficult to watch and sometimes just tiresome.

This is sick. And sickening.

Its conclusion can be viewed as a major disappointment.

Gory European gothic horror doesn't come any grittier and weirder than it does when a couple of would-be lesbian college girlfriends retreat to a weekend at the secluded farmhouse of one of their parents to study for their final exams.

Disturbing, demented, gory and one of the best horror films I've seen in a while...

The last three fourths of this film are basically like the last five minutes of Halloween -- total fear and total suspense.

Haute Tension is like a French art-house essay on slasher-movie cliches, and as such is good nasty fun.

A cinematically sound but sub-par horror flick readied for the American mass market by the addition of English credits and some truly atrocious dubbing.