High Tension

A French horror film that suffers from a dreadfully horrible dub job and a “big twist” that is a little too obvious and totally unnecessary. Two young women visit an isolated farmhouse and find themselves pursued by a nasty truck driver (the villain is a mixture of the killers from Halloween, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Director Alexandre Aja comes up with a few good scares, but not enough to maintain the chills for the entire running time. The soundtrack is a mixture of people talking French and terribly discordant English dubbing that hurts the film. (Hey, producers: We can read!) The murders are gruesome, although the version being shown in the United States has had some of its violence removed in order to get the R rating. Fans of this sort of thing can probably expect a future DVD where more of the killer’s work can be seen on screen. This is one of those movies that leaves you feeling dirty.