Not only is it an assault on the senses, the film is so narcissistically nihilistic the only ones sure to get a kick out of it are members of the Manson Family fan club.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Dec 13, 2005

The ultimate rescue, however, comes when the credits roll and the lights come up.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Jun 14, 2005

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 14, 2005

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

Full Review | Jun 13, 2005

[A] stylistically thrilling but ultimately tedious French import.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 12, 2005

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.

| Jun 10, 2005

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.

| Jun 10, 2005

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

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jun 10, 2005

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

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 10, 2005

A chainsaw-cut above recent entries in the genre: a pure, unapologetic, unironic homage to the likes of Friday the 13th that respectfully salutes all the old shtick.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 10, 2005

One of the ugliest movies I've ever seen.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jun 10, 2005

I can't say much, except that we've seen it too many times in the past, and each time half the audience feels cheated.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 10, 2005

You will be terrified or disgusted or both, which is exactly the way it was back in the day.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 10, 2005

It doesn't make an iota of sense.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jun 10, 2005

It's a no-frills set-up you've seen a hundred times, but rarely has it been executed as well.

Full Review | Jun 10, 2005

Deftly juggles gore and suspense.

Full Review | Jun 9, 2005

Purely as an exercise in style, this movie has its moments.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 9, 2005

a disappointing lapse into old-fashioned narrow-mindedness... unable to sustain considerable suspense

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 9, 2005

Like the fairly recent Cabin Fever and like earlier slasher films of that grisly ilk, High Tension takes a fairly straightforward approach to its essential reason for being, namely the stagecraft of death.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Jun 9, 2005

The philosopher Thomas Hobbes tells us life can be 'poor, nasty, brutish and short.' So is this movie.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Jun 9, 2005