Also released as
- Haute tension
- Switchblade Romance
- Magasfeszültség
- Alta tensión
- Blady strach
- Alta Tension
- Alta Tensão
- Krvava romansa
- Кровавая жатва
- Криваві жнива
- ハイテンション
- 血色月亮
- 极异之情
- 爱定你 杀定你
- X-Tension
- 엑스텐션
- 顫慄
Filed under
High Tension
High Tension is a 2003 French slasher film directed by Alexandre Aja.
The film that named New French Extremity in the popular imagination, and its ending is still being argued about.
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Two students drive to a farmhouse in the country. A man in a truck arrives in the night.
Alexandre Aja shoots the first hour as a very well-made, very brutal home-invasion film, with a sustained sequence of Marie hiding in the house while the killer works through the family that is as tense as anything in the decade.
Then there is a twist, and the twist does not survive the flashbacks the film has already shown you. Almost everybody agrees it is a cheat, and the argument is only about whether the first hour is good enough to forgive it.
It is. The staircase sequence and the cornfield are superb.
It was cut in the UK and the US, and the uncut version is the one that circulated on disc.
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Trailer
The sleeves
The same film, sold as a different film in each territory. Click any of them.
Where to watch
Australia
Canada
Germany
UK
USA
Legal sources only. Availability data from JustWatch via TMDB.
Checked 9 Aug 2026
Written about
- New French Extremity, named in a 2004 complaint
New French Extremity was coined by James Quandt in Artforum in 2004. What the phrase covered, and how Cannes and the BBFC handled it.
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