A Second Look at High Tension

Warning: Here Be Spoilers

I can think of a thousand things wrong with High Tension and I still stand by my original review but there is something about the way the ending of High Tension sticks in my mind that makes it hard to forget.



Perhaps it was the way the director took a standard image usually associated with happy endings -- in this case, a young girl eagerly turning in the direction of her current object of affection and then reaching out in that direction as if to give her a hug -- and then made it seem -- well -- creepy. The sad part is that I couldn't help sensing that Alex -- the objection of the young girl's affection -- still felt sorry for Marie -- the young girl in the mental hospital. Yet it was fairly obvious that any chance of a serious relationship between the two of them ended when Marie killed Alex's family. And that Alex had ample reason to hate Marie after everything Marie had put her through. Indeed, it could be that Alex's feeling in that final scene was not so much pity but relief that Marie was in a cell and not likely to bother her again.

Yet Marie somehow sensed that Alex was watching her even though she could not see her and turned in her direction with a facial expression that most people reserve for their deities. (Indeed, it did not seem like that much of a coincidence that the way Marie was muttering those words at the beginning of that scene made it almost sound as if Marie was praying.) Alex obviously no longer loved Marie and never did love her in the way that Marie wanted her to. But Marie still loved Alex -- and probably will continue to do so till the day she dies -- even though her violent actions have ended any realistic hope she ever had of ever being loved back.

Some people would consider that last part a happy ending and separated from the rest of the movie, one might even be fooled into thinking that it was. In context, though, it seemed far more scarier than the ending of any conventional final girl thriller.