A Movie A Day: High Tension cranks it up

You know the expression An apple a day keeps the doctor away, well for me, a movie a day keeps me feeling great. Usually I try to watch at least one movie per day if I have the time. Some days I can watch two. But this will be my first official entry today and I will use the last movie I watched, which was on Friday. It's called High Tension, a French horror movie from 2003, that was effectively creepy and gory as hell. The story has two college friends Alexia and Marie going to visit Alexia's family in the quiet countryside for the weekend. Alexia and Marie are best friends and have a bond that's quite strong. Once they arrive at the house and introductions are made, things settle down. But when a mysterious stranger shows up in the middle of the night, all hell breaks loose. Marie is waken by the ruckus and quickly tries to avoid detection by the killer. Marie is played by Cecile De France is she is positively riveting in this role. Starting off panicky she realizes she has to stand up and save Alexia, who the stranger has kidnapped. This soon becomes a cat and mouse movie, with Marie trying her best to save her friend. High Tension is not your typical horror movie. You will have to actually think about it as you watch it. And I won't spoil the ending..let's just say it's different. Of course the gore and blood factor are quite high. I believe the makers of the Saw films checked out Tension and took some crib notes. Things get kinda nasty in Tension that will please all horror fans. And as I said before De France makes this movie. Her central performance is key to the whole film. If she couldn't have pulled it off, I don't think Tension would have worked as well as it did. A good scare of a movie for Halloween.