“I won’t let anyone come between us anymore.”
First Screening. DVD. I make it a point not to see trailers or look at film reviews before I go see a film. Largely the art work is what pulls me in, followed by the cast and crew above and below the line. The image of this short haired girl covered in blood carrying around a gas saw was an effective hook and so for two dollars at Half Priced Books, I took a risk. After the film was over I then read the reviews and I was surprised at how few of the film's attributes were brought up and how easily it was to go to the worst impossible interpretation of the film. It reminded me of Dressed to Kill, when that film was bashed for effectively saying that trans women were killers. When in fact, that wasn't the point of the story at all. That one character in that one film had a split personality, and that is exactly what this film had, I saw in a kind of homage to Dressed to Kill. It wasn't the only one either. The axe murder was clearly a reference to the Shining and the drive through he forest was a call back to Halloween. Beyond Dressed to Kill, this is really much more like Fight Club, in which a schizophrenic is revealed during the third act.
The queer criticism is really strange. First, I didn't see this as a queer film at all. Marie was not gay, her other personality wasn't either. Her other personality was a misogynistic and hateful killer. Other personalities (according to wikipedia) do not represent the secret desires of the 'main' personality or however you want to define it. It is a totally different person reacting differently to the same situation as the main personality. The film's finale, in which Marie is kissing Alex, is misread. Alex is giving into the killer, using sex as a way to draw the killer closer so she can stab him. When the killer gets closer and the kiss, it is the killer kissing Alex, not Marie. Marie does the same thing to the killer in the greenhouse when all of a sudden she starts sucking the fingers of the killer quite suggestively. She's just trying to lure him in. I simply don't think Marie is gay simply because she has short hair, doesn't want to sleep with a lot of guys, and happens to see her friend nude through a window. I feel that scene is misread as well. The criticism is Marie sees Alex shower, go upstairs, and masturbates and the implication of the criticism is Marie is thinking about Alex when she does it. I think this is a false reading. The film uses flash cuts to introduce thoughts or flashbacks to characters, but there isn't one when Marie is masturbating. So she is not thinking about Alex. Another criticism is the killer shows up when Marie is masturbating and the first murder occurs when Marie orgasms. This is simply not true. The first murder takes place before they even arrive to the farm (though how, we do not know, as the entire physical existence of the van is perplexing). I disassociated Marie masturbating with Alex because she was outside and saw Alex showering and that was the time to be masturbating. The opening scene takes pains to tell us the two women are close friends, and it's not unlikely (especially in Europe) for two women who are rooming together to see each other in such a state. At the very least, it could have put Marie 'in the mood' and she decided to rub one out before bed. This is hardly suggestive of her harboring secret desires of homosexuality. I think that's more homophobic. The line that some say decides the case is when Marie says “I won’t let anyone come between us anymore” but it’s not that crazy ( no pun intended ( to think this is the killer talking).
The film is charged with sexism and chauvinism, yet Alex is the only one we see half nude, and only for a few seconds. When Marie masturbates, the only thing we see is her hand down her pants. The most suggestive exposed body part is new navel. This is the opportune time in a horror film for her to be topless in panties and frantically frig herself like Single White Female or a dozen other films, and yet the director does not take that opportunity. Instead, what we see is a flip of what we normally see in horror films where usually the couple that have sex are the couple that dies. In this aspect, no one has sex (unless you count masturbation) and neither of the participants die. Everyone who does die is tangential to the story (although not to Alex as a character). Association of murder with orgasm is not new. Famke Jansen did it in Goldeneye, but in a film with various ways to kill people, the opportunity here was to cut between the orgasm and the penetration of the knife and yet we did not see it. So again, the two are disassociated. Instead what you have is a tale of someone's mental illness getting the better of them and if the film could be criticized for anything it could be this (I didn't read that anywhere on Letterbxd, though).
What I saw instead was a woman (possibly sexually frustrated) who scene by scene was doing what she could to survive having no idea that she was the cause of her own suffering. France's acting goes from clueless (the house) to desperate (the van) to sheer terror (the gas station) and then reverses to determination (the chase) to bravery (the greenhouse) to demented delirium (the road). It is rare for an actor to showcase so many facets in a single performance. I found it compelling when the 'reveal' was made. It was the only way to sell the horror as tale, and that's the crux of the matter. Why is The Exorcist or The Omen good? It is because of the story backed up by a compelling performances, just like any other film. Without that, this is just another slasher film, and most slasher films and horror films are just trash. It is why I do not like the genre. I'm not even a huge Halloween fan. I thought Hellfest was done well, but it had not meaning. Whereas High Tension, which was aptly named because it kept you on the edge of your seat, had a good story with good character development that paid homage in neat ways to the genre without falling into the trap of the genre.