Aja's High Tension is a deeply problematic film. On the surface, it's an effective pastiche of low-budget, 1970s horror films like Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes (for which Aja has been tapped to do a remake) and Tobe Hooper's original Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Just below the surface, it's a disturbingly misogynistic and even homophobic film, one that takes out its issues on its characters in violent and bloody ways. Ultimately, it may be a better study of the director and co-writer's psyche than that of his central character.
That central character is university student Marie (Cécile de France), who goes with her friend Alex (Maiwenn Le Besco) to Alex's family farm in the French countryside to study for exams. The first night they spend in the isolated farmhouse turns into one of terror as a mysterious stranger (Philippe Nahon) shows up at the house, killing Alex's entire family, abducting Alex and leaving Marie to chase after him, trying to save her friend.
The middle section of the film—after the requisite setup and before the unfortunate plot twist near the end—is a near-flawless horror spectacle, the best horror film to achieve wide release in America in years. Aja, like recent horror auteurs Eli Roth (Cabin Fever) and Victor Salva (Jeepers Creepers), clearly has a deep love for early slasher flicks, and his re-creation of the style of the late '70s and early '80s is gruesome and brutally effective. Without a word spoken or a care taken to establish motive, the nameless killer simply steps into the house and starts his murderous rampage. Why? No one knows. Doesn't matter.
Aja establishes early on that Marie is a closeted lesbian who secretly lusts after her friend, and it's not hard to read all the nasty, inexplicable violence that befalls everyone Marie comes in contact with as divine punishment for her homosexuality. At the same time, Aja's unflinching camera takes such a dispassionate view of the action that it doesn't at first appear that he's judging Marie.
Once the plot twist appears toward the film's end, though, it's clear that Aja is exercising some seriously sick and violent fantasies against women in general and gay women in particular, and the complicity of the viewer in such repugnant bigotry is an immediate turnoff. Furthermore, from a storytelling standpoint the twist makes no sense, rendering much of the preceding action incomprehensible.
High Tension shouldn't be discounted entirely, though, since it is undoubtedly a stylistic achievement and a complex, troublesome statement on sexual politics.