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 nig... Read allBest 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.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.
- Awards
- 6 wins & 9 nominations
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe camera used during the car-attack scene got so much fake blood on it during shooting that when it was being used on another film later on fake blood oozed from it during the focusing of a shot.
- GoofsThe killer takes the ax out of the gas station clerk, so he had to have flipped him over to do so. So it makes sense why the clerk is on his back in a later scene.
- Alternate versionsLions Gate was originally going to release the film uncut with an NC-17 rating theatrically but theaters were not too happy with the idea so Lion Gate cut about 2 minutes for the US theatrical release to secure a "R" rating. The changes were:
- Alex's father is graphically decapitated with a bookcase, his headless neck spraying blood. In the R-rated version, the initial killing is implicit rather than explicit, and later, during a flashback, his killing is gone.
- The scene of the killer applying a concrete saw to the stomach of the man driving the car was edited shorter
- When Alex's mother has her throat slashed, the scene is edited short; most of the arterial spurting, as the killer pulls back her head, is gone. The shot of her severed hand also is removed, leaving no indication of what exactly happened to her.
- The scene where Marie strikes the killer's face in with the barbed wire post is shortened and less explicit; Marie hits the killer fewer times, and there are fewer details of the killer's wounds shown.
- SoundtracksA2
extrait from Célébration
(François-Eudes Chanfrault)
Recorded, Performed and Mixed by François-Eudes Chanfrault
(P) 2002 MK2 Music
Editions: 2002 Ciné Nada Music
Featured review
For the first sixty minutes or so, Haute Tension is an uncompromising, brutal, nerve-shredding, edge-of-the-seat thriller—not surprising since virtually every one of those minutes is a blatant steal from Dean Koontz's brilliant, brutal, nerve-shredding, edge of the seat novel Intensity. Unfortunately, after the hour mark, director Alexandre Aja gradually steers his narrative away from Koontz's novel, presumably in a futile effort to disguise his plagiarism, and the film slowly falls apart, culminating in a ridiculous twist ending that makes a mockery of all that we have seen thus far.
For fans of Intensity, it's a particularly frustrating experience: not just because the Koontz receives absolutely no credit for his work, but also because Aja's handling of the author's material is so good. If only Aja had adapted the whole of Koontz's book (preferably with the author's approval), we might have had one of the greatest horror movies of all time; instead, we get an hour of absolutely stonking stuff (the opening home invasion, in particular, is flawlessly handled and amazingly gory), which are followed by twenty more minutes of reasonably solid cat-and-mouse action, and then that bloody awful finale.
For all the excellent stuff 'inspired' by Koontz, a rating of 9/10 seems fair; but for stealing the plot without giving the author credit and then having the nerve to tack on a dumb ending, I deduct three of those points, leaving the film a final score from me of 6/10. Worth a watch (especially for gore-hounds), but impossible to wholeheartedly endorse.
For fans of Intensity, it's a particularly frustrating experience: not just because the Koontz receives absolutely no credit for his work, but also because Aja's handling of the author's material is so good. If only Aja had adapted the whole of Koontz's book (preferably with the author's approval), we might have had one of the greatest horror movies of all time; instead, we get an hour of absolutely stonking stuff (the opening home invasion, in particular, is flawlessly handled and amazingly gory), which are followed by twenty more minutes of reasonably solid cat-and-mouse action, and then that bloody awful finale.
For all the excellent stuff 'inspired' by Koontz, a rating of 9/10 seems fair; but for stealing the plot without giving the author credit and then having the nerve to tack on a dumb ending, I deduct three of those points, leaving the film a final score from me of 6/10. Worth a watch (especially for gore-hounds), but impossible to wholeheartedly endorse.
- BA_Harrison
- Jun 4, 2010
- Permalink
Details
Box office
- Budget
- €2,200,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $3,681,066
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $1,897,705
- Jun 12, 2005
- Gross worldwide
- $6,291,958
- Runtime1 hour 31 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- DTS
- Dolby Digital EX(original version)
- Aspect ratio
- 2.35 : 1
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