"Extreme Hollywood: ‘High Tension’ and Alexandre Aja’s Influence on American Horror Cinema" by Wesley Lara (Bloody Disgusting)
The evolution of American horror cinema is nothing short of fascinating.
Film is an art form that, like most art mediums, may never truly die, in spite of the many arguments pointing towards its apparently upcoming demise. Film has evolved drastically from its inception in the late 19th century in both obvious and subtle manners.
Of course, film has been far evolved from a neat novelty concept where the Lumiere brothers filmed a day at a train station and scared people with the realistic train coming at them. Nowadays, the art of film is used to tell stories meant for audiences to actively see what is happening, as opposed to reading a book and visualizing the scenes for themselves. Maybe this limits the spirit of imagination, but it’s just as enthralling to SEE Pennywise terrorize children than to just imagine it.
Beyond the obvious evolution of film as an art form, the medium has also given a comfortable home to a wide array of genres meant to evoke different emotions and tell unique stories that can successfully make the transition from imagination to reality. Genres that were previously only seen in the literary world have now made themselves to be cornerstones of film history and culture.
Among the most successful and constantly evolving of those genres is horror.
Horror has led a timeless life in the world of art, originating in folk tales specifically designed to cater to different cultures with different fears. Horror has always been an art form created out of the unique fears and paranoia experienced by a vast number of storytellers. Reflecting societal concerns, horror has managed to stay strong in the modern age, arguably even more terrifying now as the internet boom has led people to connect with fears experienced across the globe.
It’s the internet boom that led to French horror auteur, Alexandre Aja, breaking into the American mainstream. A notable figure in French cinema, Alexandre Aja has long been involved in the horror genre at over 16 years and counting. His name may not ring as many bells as a name like Wes Craven or George Romero would, but Aja’s subtle (and not-so-subtle) impact on the horror genre is deserving of recognition, even if his influence may seem diluted.
What I mean by this is that Aja is by no means a director whose work is groundbreaking on a grand scale. He hasn’t pioneered a movement in the same grandiose manner as someone like Steven Spielberg with the birth of the blockbuster. Not to mention, Aja’s rise in the horror genre came at a period in the mid-to-early 2000s when an entire group of filmmakers became renowned for their contributions to the horror genre.
This group of filmmakers is called the Splat Pack, which included Aja with the likes of Eli Roth, James Wan, Leigh Whannell, Rob Zombie, and more. The common theme in their works was brutal and graphic violence, often coupled with disturbing stories and implications. Many of the projects birthed in this era, from Saw to Hostel to The Devil’s Rejects, went on to become cult classics and helped inspire a subgenre of horror known as “torture porn”, which was as gratuitous as it sounded and led to a surprisingly successful horror boom in the mid-2000s.
However, when looking back at Alexandre Aja’s work at the time, it’s notable that while the films he made were similarly graphic, they were in no way reflective of the state of torture porn that would dominate the horror market for a period of time. Aja’s films were shocking, but there was a streamlined focus on the pain of the human body, contrasting heavily with the gimmicky nature of the Saw and Hostel franchises. Aja’s films were brutal and personal and nowhere is this more apparent than with his 2003 subversive slasher hit, High Tension (Haute Tension).
Released a year before Saw and two years before Hostel in Aja’s home of France, High Tension was a film that consistently felt as though it was just another addition to the crop of silly slasher horror flicks that dominated the horror market at the time. Scream made slashers hip again, so every studio and filmmaker tried to capitalize on the success of the Craven horror-comedy. Its popularity still holds strong to this day, so it’s understandable that most films of the same vein get left behind in terms of relevancy and influence.
High Tension was another beast altogether and not because the film tried to emulate Scream. Aja’s dark slasher horror added a level of extreme violence and brutal cynicism that had not been seen in the slasher genre since arguably Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The violence was legitimately nauseating (thanks to some fantastic practical effects) and the story was much more tragic than the average “giant killer stalks horny teens” vehicle.
Unlike the previous slashers before that managed to include a sense of hope at the end of the story, High Tension was afforded no such gifts. Alexandre Aja made sure to present a slasher film that not only took us uncomfortably close to the violence, but refused to let the audience breathe a sigh of relief at the end of the movie. The terrible events that happen in High Tension linger as the final scene ends, instilling a constant presence over the proceedings and taking the potential circumstances of such trauma into serious consideration.
But what IS the story of High Tension and why is it so influential for American horror cinema?
Aja’s slasher seemingly follows the basic structure of those that came before it on the first watch. The story, on the surface, gives off the impression of two French students, Marie and Alex, (played by Cecile de France and Maiwenn), staying together at one of their family’s houses, only to fight for their lives as a mad trucker knocks on their door and begins to terrorize them and the family. On a first watch, the conflict could be boiled down to another home invasion-type thriller, but the film’s giant twist turns that on its head and indicates something MUCH more disturbing.
Major spoilers ahead for High Tension. Proceed at your own risk.
Aja’s twist in High Tension comes out of literally nowhere as we discover that the madman that murdered Alex’s entire family was actually Marie the whole time. Meaning that the senseless decapitation of Alex’s father, the throat slice of her mother, and the rifle kill of the youngest brother were as a result of Marie’s obsessive feelings over Alex taking a hold of her sanity, leading her to end up in an insane asylum, forever longing for the day where she can hold Alex in her arms again.
It’s a twist that unfortunately does dilute the logic behind the film’s story, but looking at the bigger picture, it is one of two major factors that has managed to stay at the forefront of the horror genre even today. Beyond the graphic violence that often gets paired with the torture porn subgenre, High Tension reintroduced the concept of cynical horror: the types of horror films that explore the worst possible scenarios of bad situations and often have little-to-no hope whatsoever for the characters. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre introduced a similar concept in the '70s, but High Tension brought it back to the forefront of mainstream horror.
These types of films tend to imply that no matter how hard one may try, there are moments in life where a happy ending is simply not attainable. Even when the killer gets caught or the situation is smoothed over to a degree, the resulting trauma of what just happened will forever plague the minds of whoever suffered and survived. High Tension is textbook cynical horror and even with its initial negative reception in the United States, it has still managed to subconsciously inspire the bulk of horror that followed it.
Though the film underperformed in the U.S. with its belated release in 2005, it opened up the conversation that pondered exactly how far American studios and filmmakers could go with mainstream horror. This saw horror films take a different approach in terms of their thematic content. Now there were filmmakers like Neil Marshall, Greg McLean, Rob Zombie, and Adam Green trying their hand at cynical horror with films like The Descent, Wolf Creek, the Halloween duology remakes, and Frozen, respectively. Studios gave these provocative filmmakers a mainstream platform to craft their visions in the same way they gave High Tension a surprisingly wide release in the States.
Even beyond the 2000s, films like It Follows, Hereditary, It Comes at Night, The Witch, You’re Next, Knock Knock, and more continue to push a sense of cynicism and endless paranoia, the type felt after High Tension’s shocking finale. Though the film’s U.S. release came after Saw, Aja’s film contains many of the same cynical traits and tropes that we see in 2019, most recently with Ari Aster’s Midsommar. This feeling that the horrors we experience will eventually consume us all is a prevalent attitude in even the most cheesy and mainstream of American horror films like Unfriended, Truth or Dare, and Wish Upon. American horror studios have become open to the idea of presenting horror in a hopeless light and High Tension was among the pioneers of this attitude in the early 2000s.
What sets Aja and High Tension even further apart from torture porn and what continues to rear its head in modern horror is the treatment of the human body. Unlike the Saw and Hostel films or even most mainstream horror films at the time, the body is not treated like a prop in Aja’s eyes. No matter how horrific the kills may be, Alexandre Aja treats the body like a work of art that is unceremoniously destroyed by outside forces. Aja focuses his direction towards the body suffering, as opposed to treating it like a slab of meat to be punctured by the killer with a machete and/or hatchet.
High Tension may contain some gory and wince-worthy kills, but there’s always the sense that the characters’ final moments are emphasized not simply for exploitation, but for a small glimpse into the world of a soon-to-be-victim. The death of Alex’s younger brother is done off-screen, for instance, yet the final moments we bear witness to are the child’s cries for help as he wanders helplessly through a cornfield. There’s no comedy and the end result is gut-wrenching, which is exactly how Aja wants us to feel as we morbidly watch on.
The death of Alex’s mother shows a similar sense of direction. Her death by throat slicing is certainly more graphic and Aja is not afraid to show a close-up of her throat opening with blood gushing out. Yet there is no way to have fun during this scene since a good portion of the kill is shown through a closed closet door, with her eyes receiving prime real estate over the screen. Her eyes’ transition from panicked to lifeless is horrifying and the level of intimacy makes the pain feel real. A little too real.
It’s this kind of restraint and respect for the human body that has managed to etch itself as a cornerstone for modern American horror films like the previously mentioned films, as well as Aja’s own future work with The Hills Have Eyes remake and the recently released alligator thriller, Crawl. Horror filmmakers today have, for the most part, borrowed this idea from Aja and similar films in the New French Extremity movement like Martyrs and Inside, and crafted original narratives simultaneously punish and respect the human body by zoning in on the humanity behind the pain.
When we see films like A Quiet Place, Crawl, Pet Sematary, and Hereditary, we are exposed to a world of suffering brought on by horrible things happening to human bodies. Things like car collisions, animal mauling, sudden beheading, death by fire, etc., all occur with a stunning balance of both gratuitous body horror and dark drama, as the horror of the situation is the focus of the scene rather than waiting for another “awesome” kill scene. Nothing wrong with a little fun during a horror movie, but the trend of shock for the sake of shock in American horror films is gradually falling to the wayside.
I’m not trying to imply that Aja and High Tension were direct influences to many and/or all of the American horror films we see today, but many of his trademarks, namely the focus on human suffering, have lived on in the aforementioned films, most of which have experienced some degrees of success. The formula of films like the Saw franchise and Hostel has led to diminishing box office returns in recent years, meanwhile, a similarly “schlocky” horror director like Aja has managed to maintain a stable career in Hollywood without having to change up his formula in drastic manners.
The successful career and influence of Aja has also led to a similar American breakthrough for fellow French Extremist directors, Gaspar Noe and Coralie Fargeat. Their films haven’t received the same level of recognition of Aja’s work, but the former’s success in Hollywood with the acquisition of Climax by A24 has indicated that foreign horror directors can have a voice in the cutthroat world of Hollywood. Meanwhile, Fargeat seems to have taken more of a direct influence from Aja and the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez as well with her rape-revenge thriller, Revenge. Climax’s drug trip and Revenge’s bloody vengeance tale are the types of films that may not have received mainstream attention in any other manner, but thanks to the success of Alexandre Aja, these films have all the more leeway for increased exposure and opportunities to direct for Hollywood if they so choose.
Of course, while I continue to hype High Tension as an early pioneer of taboo-breaking horror films in the 2000s and 2010s, I cannot praise every aspect of the film. On the contrary, Aja’s slasher film still exists as a polarizing piece of work namely due to the ending and several unnecessary plot holes creating fractures in the film’s logic. There are many ways to improve the film, but this is exactly what studios have been trying to do following the film’s release. It may not have been successful at the American box office, but the film’s own notoriety in France, coupled with the rise of the Splat Pack, led to the film’s legacy living on in similarly disturbing horror films in the coming years.
With A24 gaining recognition as a studio willing to back art-house horror films, the spirit of High Tension has now been able to live on in the studio’s various horror flicks, especially the likes of Hereditary, It Comes at Night, The Witch, and of course Climax. Even in an Oscar-winning film like Black Swan, Aronofsky’s direction shares a similar respect for the human body as Aja. Not as overly graphic, yes, but Aronofsky’s freedom to explore this region of horror and its subsequent success at the box office and Oscars can still be traced back to High Tension and the blueprints it provided for filmmakers and studios to push moral boundaries without being tasteless.
High Tension is a film that has continued to receive an equal amount of love and hate from audiences 16 years later. Many of these opinions have also been largely unchanged. Anybody who liked or felt an admiration for the film may still feel the same way and those who hated it, for the most part, still harbor some form of hatred towards the film’s graphic violence. But with the prominence of streaming services taking over the film industry, Aja’s cult classic has remained in the conversation for controversial horror films nonetheless.
Despite the very real hatred towards this film, it’s incredibly fascinating to see its legacy live on in American horror cinema long after torture porn fell out of relevancy. Splat Pack directors like Eli Roth, Robert Rodriguez, and Leigh Whannell have also managed to incorporate these elements in some of their most recent films, such as Rodriguez in Planet Terror, Roth with the Green Inferno (which was also a bit of a callback to the era of torture porn) and most namely Whannell’s Upgrade, a literal body horror film.
Even if filmmakers don’t admit it and studios try to steer the conversation elsewhere, many of the contributions of original mainstream horror films in the mid-to-late 2000s and all through the 2010s can owe a good chunk of their success to a French slasher that, while undeniably flawed and unpopular, served as a prominent pioneer of boundary-breaking horror in mainstream cinema in the same manner in which its own influence, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, did so about 40 years earlier.