Yes, another French film. I swear I'm not doing this on purpose. This time we have an attempt at horror from Alexandre Aja and his film High Tension. His other films (The Hills Have Eyes remake and the Piranha remake in 3D) should give you a hint as to what this film was like. Blood, death, screaming. A pretty typical horror film, but with a few curve balls thrown in.Thankfully this movie doesn't waste much time getting into the action, just about 20 minutes in when it all begins. Some pretty typical stuff really. A fat, grunting man comes into a house and walks about killing it's occupants. He chains up the daughter and puts her in his truck, while our main character (the family friend), Marie, sneaks around trying to free her. She accidentally gets locked in the back of the truck as well and goes for a ride. The rest is pretty predictable up until the last 10 minutes or so when they reveal the movie's big twist.
However, instead of having the intended reaction of "oh man, no way!". It triggers more of a "wait...what?" reaction. As this twist is impossible, with everything that happened in the film up until the twist is revealed. This makes it so the viewer has to expand their imagination. I'm not sure if this really works, because one of the aspects that helps to make a horror film so horrifying is the viewer being able to put themselves in the shoes of the victim. This sort of takes you out of that, but maybe that's just me. All in all it's an entertaining watch and there's really only one scene at the beginning that really helped this earn the shock badge. Stay away if you don't like lots of blood. Aja loves lots of blood.
Shock or not? Shock
Film: 3/5
Shock: 3/5
