These days it seems that part of the requirement of any suspense thriller is the big reveal; the moment of truth; the I-never-saw-it-coming twist ending. In anticipation of “The Happening” (opening Friday) and its director M. Night Shyamalan, the man single-handedly responsible for the commercial rebirth of the twist ending (thanks a lot, “The Sixth Sense”!), I present my list of the worst offenders in recent memory. In the hilarious Spike Jonze/Charlie Kaufman movie “Adaptation,” Nic Cage’s buzzed-about screenplay called “The 3” has a twist where the killer, the cop, and the female hostage all turn out to be the same person. What’s sad is that there is probably a script floating around right now with that exact idea. This Top 10 is spoiler-heavy, obviously, so if you feel the need to see any of the awful movies below, don’t read about them here. On the other hand, I look at this list as a public service—save your time and money and don’t waste it on any of these movies.
10. Signs (2002)
Let’s start things off by paying tribute to the master of modern twisty mayhem—the man known as M. Night. After the critical (Best Picture, Director, Screenplay nominee) and commercial ($293 million domestic) success of “The Sixth Sense,” it’s been a steady downhill slope for Shyamalan. Give him some credit—he understands that the key to a good twist is that the movie has been hinting to the audience during the entire film what it’s really about. Turns out this alien invasion movie starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix isn’t about aliens at all. It’s about spirituality. After rejecting God because of the tragic death of his wife, Gibson’s ex-priest realizes that his wife’s last words—“swing away”—were directed at his washed-up baseball playing brother (Phoenix) in the event that they should find an alien lurking in their living room one afternoon. It’s also lucky that one of Gibson’s children has left glasses of water all over the place because water burns these invaders like acid. When Phoenix starts swinging away at the glasses at Gibson’s behest, the alien is toast. Gibson’s kid: “Did someone save me?” Gibson: “Yeah, baby. I think someone did.” Gibson’s faith is restored, ba-da-boom, ba-da bing. In the last scene, he is getting ready for church. J.D. and I argue about this movie constantly. I won’t debate M. Night’s skill in raising tension and stringing an audience along breathlessly. What I will say is that when the stakes are that high, the payoff better be good. Besides the fact that aliens shouldn’t invade a planet that’s mostly covered in the thing that kills them, the fact that Gibson returns to God because some silly coincidences saved his family’s lives is enough for me to question the very nature of his faith. Is that all it takes? (Sidenote: see #6 for a discussion of the the director’s cameos.)
9. Boxing Helena (1993)
What is the laziest surprise ending in the world? If you guessed the “It was all a dream” ending, you’re correct. It shows no imagination on the part of the filmmaker to tack crap like this on at the end of your film. It’s so overwrought that Bob Newhart parodied it to great effect (and you’d have thought he’d put it to death once and for all) when his character woke up from a dream that lasted 184 episodes of “Newhart” from 1982-1990 to discover that he was still the Bob Newhart of “The Bob Newhart Show” that ran from 1972-1978. When Jennifer Lynch (yep, David’s daughter) directed “Boxing Helena” in 1993, she should have known better. Yet, there it is—a lonely neurosurgeon (really?) played by Julian Sands waking up to find that he hadn’t really amputated the limbs of hit-and-run victim Sherilyn Fenn and kept her in his house waiting for the moment when she relents and returns his affections—it was all just a dream. Lame. As an interesting side note, for a true-story version of the whole man-disfigures-woman-and-woman-comes-to-love-man-anyway routine, rent the documentary “Crazy Love.” It’s not a great film, but it proves anything is possible.
8. The Game (1997)
From the director of one of the best twist endings ever (“Fight Club”) comes this labyrinthine mess of a story that tries hard to be more than what it is—an intricately silly game of Mouse Trap. David Fincher followed up “Seven,” his atmospheric take on the serial killer genre, with this trite piece of bullshit that wants to be about corporate greed and cruelty. It piles twist upon twist until the final twist is so unbelievable that in order for it to have been true, somebody would have had to have scripted a whole bunch of stuff for a whole bunch of people, not the least of which is an oblivious main character. Rich businessman Michael Douglas receives the gift of a real-life role playing game that finds his bank accounts drained and attempts on his life. But not really, we find out later. So he goes to the company and shoots the first person who opens up the final door. It’s his brother Sean Penn, who is now dead. But not really—blanks! Douglas is so distraught that he tries to commit suicide by jumping off the roof. But he doesn’t die because there is an airbag placed at just the right spot. Little bro was trying to teach him a lesson. All the actors who were in on the scam, including his “dead” brother, appear and the game is over. Or is it? This movie is a real patience-tester. How many times can you show something is true and then take it back again? By the end, does anyone even care? Nope.
7. Saw (2004)
Here’s another flick where the primary plot device is some stupidly insane person who wants to teach people that he views to be lesser than him how to appreciate life. What better way to do that than to concoct a devilish reality game where someone must make a ridiculously gory choice while chained to a radiator? The first in the wildly successful “Saw” series was the only one that worked—until the big surprise at the end, that is. There is no redeeming social commentary or inherent cultural value in “Saw,” but it poses questions so ridiculous that they could have been dreamed up for the Heathers’ lunchtime poll at Westerburg High. “Would you rather….cut through your leg with a hacksaw and murder an innocent man you don’t know, or let your wife and child die at the hands of a maniac?” Now, that’s a good one. Unfortunately, it stretches an already non-existent credulity to have the mastermind suddenly reveal himself as the corpse that has been lying on the floor next to you the entire time. You can’t have an “a-ha” moment when there was nothing to suggest it was coming in the first place. It’s a cheap trick for a movie that didn’t need one. The shock value of the first one is all gone now that we know who the Jigsaw killer is and why he does what he does anyway.
6. High Tension (2003/5)
It wasn’t enough for Alexandre Aja to skillfully pay homage to the slasher genre and actually generate some real—no pun intended—tension from a genre that has been severely lacking in that department for years. For most of the film, “High Tension,” is a visceral, terrifying experience which recalls obvious influences like “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” By staying just one step ahead of a mad trucker with a dismembered-head fetish and a big knife, a young French girl (who else?) narrowly escapes the gory death that everyone around her falls prey to and manages to stay alive until the end of the picture. At which point we find out—ready for this?—that she is the killer. The entire time she’s been the one killing everyone; not the trucker. I guess that means she didn’t have a car chase with herself or beat herself with a barbwire post. Granted, with her obsessive behavior towards her best friend (among other insignificant clues), Aja hinted this was coming from the beginning (and even more so in the alternate title of the movie, which was released as “Switchblade Romance” in the U.K.). But that doesn’t excuse a twist that, whether plausible or not, is a remarkable turnaround that suddenly lacks the courage to stick with what the movie does best: be a first-person “what would you do?” horror experience. Now it’s just another stupid serial killer flick and the next time we see it, it won’t be the least bit scary because we know she’s just delusional and not actually in any danger at all. Boo.
5. The Village (2004)
He’s back! Shyamalan’s follow-up to “Signs” (which was a box office success) was this slow-burn of a stinker. Like “Unbreakable,” the twist was pretty unbelievable, but it was the post-twist handling of said twist that really pissed me off. In “Unbreakable,” what angered me were the cheesy end titles that told us of Sam Jackson and Bruce Willis’ fates, “Animal House”-style, as we were still trying to comprehend the fact that the pair were superhero and super-villain. In “The Village,” it was the visage of Shyamalan himself as the Architect of the entire film with a capital A that really rankled me. Okay, I’ll back up. The twist at the end here is that “The Village” is not actually set in the 1800s. The inhabitants live in a wildlife preserve in modern times and that the government is bribed not to fly planes over the area so that the children who were born there will still believe in the group’s olde-tymie lifestyle and live as the “elders” want them to. It doesn’t hold up to logic and it’s kind of insulting, but what really ticked me off about this conclusion is that Shyamalan reveals that he himself is the forest ranger in charge of the preserve through an annoying and pretentious slow camera swivel where he is glimpsed only in a reflection. As if we didn’t already know that he was the man behind the entire film, he had to show us—literally. In “The Lady in the Water,” which doesn’t really have a twist and still managed to suck more than all the rest of his flicks, Shyamalan plays no less than the savior/martyr of the world. Tasteless and stupid.
4. Perfect Stranger (2007)
“Perfect Stranger” is an offensively slick and soulless piece of Hollywood crap. Halle Berry is vacant, looking for the killer of an old friend, but poor Bruce Willis gets the worst of it. After playing head honcho in a Victoria’s Secret ad for half the film, his creepy character (in a movie full of creeps) is framed by Berry for the murder; unceremoniously written out of the film without any acknowledgement whatsoever, a cheap pawn in a silly twist ending. Before that, Bruce uses his smirk for evil, trying to lure Berry; but wait—she’s luring him—what a brilliant female-empowering switcheroo! No, wait. It’s not. It’s just the opposite. She’s the killer after all. But we thought it was her slimy porn-addicted stalker friend played by Giovanni Ribisi (who builds his own Halle Berry in effigy—eww). Nope. When Ribisi says he’s onto her scheme, Berry stabs him and suggests to the cops that he was probably the real killer. Slimy corporate weasel or slimy stalker? Make up your mind, Halle! I love it when last-minute flashbacks come out of nowhere at the end of a film to give a character a reason for their sudden turnaround. As a child, Berry witnessed her mother killing her sexually abusive father. Now she’s a murderer herself. Oh, okay. ‘Nuff said. Explained away. Thanks for that valuable piece of character shorthand. Wait—it just gets better from there. Since we can’t have a murderer go unpunished (even one as hot as Halle Berry), we see a man looking out a window who has presumably seen what really happened and will do the right thing. Thank God they didn’t show him turning Berry in or we’d probably have to see a shot of her with a key to her handcuffs under her tongue for another “gotcha!” moment.
3. Color of Night (1994)
Sometimes the worst twist is the one that you can see coming from so far away that you start to second guess whether it’s really going to be a twist after all. “It’s just too obvious,” you’re thinking. Surely I’m not smarter than every other person in this film, right? This can’t be an actual twist, can it? Oh yes it can, and in the case of the Bruce Willis erotic thriller “Color of Night,” it is a doozy. A gender-confused young man named Richie and a mysterious beautiful young woman named Rose come into his life at the same time. Despite him being a world-class psychiatrist (and the fact that he sees Rose’s naked body throughout the movie), he’s still not able to figure out that Richie and Rose are the same person, both played unconvincingly by poor 20 year-old Jane March. Could this movie have been inspired by Best Picture nominee “The Crying Game,” which had a similar gender twist, and was released to much well-deserved fanfare in 1992? Regardless, “The Crying Game” is effective whether you saw the twist coming or not (and it doesn’t even come at the end). But the reveal in “Color of Night” is so obvious that the movie becomes a whole ‘nother kind of film. If you can stomach the ludicrousness, then you may as well celebrate it—at which point “Color of Night” becomes high camp.
2. Hide and Seek (2005)
One good clue that you are in the middle of a movie with a twist ending is when you notice lots of characters that aren’t remotely credible because they are weird when the manipulative screenplay requires them to be, but totally normal when it doesn’t. This insulting thriller, starring a tortured Dakota Fanning and her mild-mannered father Robert De Niro, spends most of its time throwing out red herrings while lil’ Dakota dresses like Wednesday Addams and talks to an imaginary friend named Charlie. After the stupid, stupid twist is revealed and we learn that the destructive imaginary friend is actually one half of her father’s split personality, the stage is set for a little child endangerment—the kind of thing that really brings the fun out for a scare-iffic night at the movies! De Niro also discovers that under his Charlie personality, he killed his wife and then fixed it appear to be a suicide. Bummer. After the twist, “Hide and Seek” goes from just bad to purely revolting. The hole just gets deeper and deeper. De Niro is reduced to chasing his daughter and reciting dreck like “Come out, come out, wherever you are” as he follows her into a cave. It is so beneath him. It is so sad, the slumming. Sad, depressing, sad, sad, sad. De Niro had done an American Express commercial the year before, and I remember feeling weird about it. I would take a million more of those to not ever have to watch him “paying the rent” in a movie this shitty again. The DVD has a total of five endings on it, but each one of them takes place after the above twist is revealed, so they are more like afterthoughts than anything and don’t really change any of the completely offensive content of the movie. It is one thing for a movie to be boring and awful, but it is quite another to be insulting, in bad taste, and utterly ridiculous at the same time.
1. Planet of the Apes (2001)
This is what you get for remaking a sci-fi classic, Tim Burton. Too bad he didn’t learn; he then screwed up “Willy Wonka” not long after this atrocity, which is the worst movie of his career. Since this is a list of terrible twist endings, we’ll skip over the fact that the rest of this movie was awful enough to make any sane person leave before the end. But I, like many of you, remained, hoping that something even remotely involving would happen to Mark Wahlberg. No dice. Because the 1968 original had one of the best twists ever (the crash-landed astronauts realize by seeing the ruins of the State of Liberty that they are still on Earth in the future, where man is extinct and moneys rule!), the tepid, senseless remake gets the top spot on this list for trying to manufacture its own shock ending and failing so miserably. Let’s dissect: Wahlberg goes back in time and lands in Washington, D.C. in the same period that he left, only to find Ape-raham Lincoln—a giant monument to his ape nemesis-from-the-future, General Thade! This is asinine for many reasons: If apes from the future traveled farther in the past than human astronaut Wahlberg to change Earth’s history, then—with that changed history—the events which made the apes go back would have never taken place in the first place. (Or does that make sense? These time-travel “what-if” rules always make my head hurt and seem to change all the time anyway.) Also, replacing Lincoln’s head with Thade’s seems simply designed for this one dumbass moment when Wahlberg steps out of the pod and is surrounded by armed ape guards. Very convenient. Lastly, the obvious attempt to one-up the original by including another U.S. landmark is so forced and desperate, it’s pathetic.
I so so so disagree with the fact that the The Village is on this list!! I really don’t understand the deep hatred people have for this movie. I really just think that people are mad because they don’t see his endings coming what so ever and thats what I loved about this movie, Signs and The Sixth Sense (minus the creepy Osment kid, I hate that kid). There are too many other movies that will tell you the ending in the trailer before it even comes out. I kinda think that the reasoning is sort of a cop out.. but you do know way more about this stuff then I do.
I think people hated The Village for the following reasons…
The ending is a complete cop out
The ending is obvious for some time
We expect more from M. Night
On a side note, any movie trailer that shows a scene or glimpse of the third act, a scene that will even slightly impact the power of the climax or ending should never be released to the public.
I hate going to a film and remembering a scene from the trailer, then waiting to see it only to know it will come up towards the end.
something is telling me not to keep this fight going with a movie critic and major>> (Kevin) but I’m gonna anyway..
Maybe I’m naive but I did not see that ending coming.. there was a twist you knew was coming sooner or later, but I did not expect that and I enjoyed the movie more because of it. (I should have really waited a day, this makes me look like I don’t work at work.. which I don’t, but this doesn’t make me look good at all)
And be honest, movie trailers show way more then they need to..
If J.D. normally defends “Signs” than I think he’s right. To be frank, that movie scared the shit out of me when I first saw it. I’m not very religious but, I found the spiritual-fate aspect of that movie fairly interesting. You can’t read too deeply into the Sci-Fi aspect of the story and enjoy the thriller elements.
My problem with Signs, you would think that creatures of superior intellect would for 5 minutes research a planet they were looking to take over… “Hmmm… this horrifying acid that can kill us sometimes falls from the sky and wow, even sometimes hangs in the air in a fine mist like substance. Maybe we should move on.”
My problem with the 2001 Planet of the Apes… everything.
The reason the twist ending of The Village pisses people off is that they want the movie to have been something other than what it is. I think that there’s a statement in there about isolationism, and what reveals that isolation more than to find that these people are so cut off from society that you had no idea they were chilling out in a park? Sorry it wasn’t a spooky monster in the woods film.
Let’s talk about bad endings…Donnie Darko. Just because they throw the “Deus Ex Machina” acknowledgment out in the second act doesn’t excuse it when little Donnie simply wills himself back in time and NONE of the prefaced “End of the World” shit happens or would have happened. and where the hell is Contact on this list? The alien is her f’ing father? Why not A.I as well? At least that film was an oscar nod waiting to happen until Spielberg completely dropped the last 10 minutes into the garbage.
A twist ending is something that changes everything we know that came before it. Darko and A.I. are not twists. Shyamalan’s movies never seem to connect the dots allegorically. To me, The Village was more about control (the elders, limiting freedom, etc.). Again, I have to stress that the complete illogical notion of its twist was only part of the reason it failed. The main reason was the way he went about it. About the best thing I can say for The Happening is that Shyamalan himself is not in it (although he is credited as a character that never apperas onscreen).
Two comments - obviously, in Sings if you think that the events in the movie were coincidences, you just didn’t get the movie.
Second, the Village had its weaknesses, but the scene where the girl looks around the tree and sees the monster, and then it actually runs at her was a heart stopping moment. A lady in front of me even fell out of her seat.
Thank you Rutkowskilives. The whole point of Signs is “there are no coincidences. Methinks someone wasn’t really paying attention to the movie.
K.G.:
Good call on “Contact”. That has to be one of the lamest “twist” endings ever.
JOB:
“Signs” is full of bad science and poor logic (the aliens came to harvest us?, silly.), but I find the storytelling behind it to be excellent.
“The 3s” was made into a movie. It was called Identity with John Cusack and it was indeed an awful movie.
Fucking kudos on High Tension man. #1 on my list. That is one of the scariest films to come out this decade but the ending was unnecassary.
One of the best twist endings go to Sleepaway Camp which you thought you saw coming all along (yeah of course she was the killer) but then bam! You didn’t know she had a penis! Damn, that is awesome.
The twist ending of Unbreakable isn’t that bad though. It does a great job of telling the first comic book story arc of a superhero. Unbreakabe is also the only M Night movie worth a damn too.
The ending of Saw made me laugh. I still liked it though.
I called the ending for the “The Village” before the opening credits even started. I just asked myself, “What is the worst possible twist this movie could have?” And I nailed it.
The entire movie is built on a lie. And I’m not talking about the parents lying to their kids. I’m talking about the screenwriter lying to the audience. That’s sloppy storytelling.
I’m sorry, but “The Village” breaks down at the most basic levels of logic. Why in hell would they pretend they were living in a previous century? If the children have no concept of the outside world, then what difference would the time period be? You could walk around in blue jeans and a t-shirt and still pretend there’s something terrible in the woods. The children’s understanding of the outside world is built entirely around the lie you’re telling them anyway. The “period” aspect exists solely to trick the audience, and to force the amazing twist. Lazy.
Also, why not send one of the numerous deceitful adults into the real world, instead of the blind girl? I can’t remember the half-assed excuse they use in the movie, but there’s not reason for it. Except that Shyamalan thought it would be clever. Sorry, wrong.
And if your whole reason for sending her is that so she won’t grasp the full understanding of the real world, then why tell her the monsters aren’t real. That would be a much more earth shattering revelation for a character in her situation.
And then for more lazy storytelling, and the cheapest of all thrills: after it is revealed that the monsters aren’t real, Shyamalan throws in another monster scene, and actually tries to create suspense with it! We know it’s a guy in a suit. Not scary. Not logical.
Bad Shyamalan, bad!
Um. In Contact, the alien looks like her father as an illusion/hologram/whatever to be more approachable. And it’s not pretending to be her father, she figures it out almost instantly and the alien admits it readily. That’s not really a twist; a (stupid) twist would be that she’s half alien and her father had always been an alien until recalled to Galactic Headquarters.
Planet of the Apes had me gasping in shock through the entire freakin movie. I’m glad I saw it, if only as an example of how absolutely horrible movies can be. And Charlton Heston was hilarious.
I’m actually quite surprised “The Forgotten” didn’t get a spot on the list. Worst twist ever.
Multiple twists was the point of the plot to “The Game”. Why complain? Can’t keep up?
if you think saw is a bad ending and a terrible movie, whoever your boss is needs to rethink his sanity and fire you immediatley.
Saw was terrible, and managed to make two great actors, Danny Glover and Carey Elwes, give the worst performances of their careers.
The twist is stupid because there is NO REASON for that guy to by lying on the floor. Having a twist simply for the sake of having a twist, as opposed to something that actually informs the story, is stupid and lazy.
The only part of Contact’s ending that could be considered a twist is the part where they discuss the length of static that Jodie Foster recorded during her voyage (approximately 18 hours).
It doesn’t really count as a major twist, since anyone watching the movie will already think that Foster went on a journey through space. It only serves to reveal that the government knows she was gone for a long time, and that they are covering it up.
The function of a real twist ending (and for this reason I don’t really think the Planet of the Apes remake qualifies), is to completely change the viewers understanding of EVERYTHING that has happened in the movie up to that point. So, in Signs we find out that every seemingly unrelated action was a cog in the mechanics of fate, or in The Village we discover that (gasp!) it’s been modern day all along.
Shyamalan at least knows the function of a good twist, even if his tend to be ludicrous and poorly executed.
How about the Life of David Gale. Why get himself to a whole lot of trouble and got himself killed. The sacrifice is just not logical.
Oh, you NAILED it with High Tension. I haven’t been that angry with a twist in a long time. Not only was is completely illogical, ignoring even the simplest rules of the twist, it is tremendously insulting to women. This kind of “she kills because she has teh ghey” theme is more suited to a 60s drive-in thriller.
Hahaha, man once you see it add ‘The Happening’ to this list. Alright movie but the ending … what the eff. Is M. Night even trying anymore?
I totally disagree about The Game and High Tension being on this list.
That said, I love you guys and I listen to you every Friday on Dick Dale
Not to be bringing back up, but I need to toss out my feelings on The Village. Namely, that I read a book that was almost identical when I was a kid. It was called “Running Out of Time”. Basically, there is a disease killing the children in an 1800’s village, and no one knows what to do about it. But, oh wait, the main character’s mother, who is the village midwife, does. So she sends her daughter out into the real world, where it is 1997. The main difference was that the book I had read was actually entertaining, as opposed to $8 and over 2 hours of my life, neither of which I will ever get back.
I think we are also missing the “I cannot decide on what monster to use” travesty that was the Mist. Obviously people who are stupid enough to stand in front of a window and hold up lights that are attracting giant bugs who slam into and then break through the glass as well as swinging flaming mops around inside of a store to “kill” said bugs/creatures are going to be stupid enough to sit around inside of a car contemplating a four bullet to five people suicide ratio only to be seconds away from rescue. I spent the entire car scene wanting to scream at the guy to put the kid in front of the woman and shoot them both with one bullet so he would still be able to die. But noooooooo, he had to go for his drama moment and pull the trigger hoping for a magic bullet. Then, after he boohoohoos for a few minutes the cavalry moves in and saves his stupid ass.
I’m surprised I was even able to watch the movie because I spent so much time rolling my eyes at how ridiculous it was. The “twist” at the end had me doubled over laughing and telling my boyfriend that from now on I pick the movies we go see. Stephen King needs to get back on the drugs or hang it up.
IMO, I thought “Identity” had a great twist ending, I wasn’t expecting that at all and it all made sense. It wasn’t really a twist “ending” though, because the twist is revealed pretty far back as that the character had many personalities when they’re interviewing him.
People complaining over High Tension’s ending are people who just can’t wrap their head around the fact that High Tension is something *more* (not less, by any fucking chance) then just a straight homage to 70’s horror. It’s *not* just a simple gore-fest, no matter how much you want it to be. You just have to turn on the “Lynch viewing mode” the second (and subsequent) time you watch it and try not to be so pissed off just because you were fooled into thinking it’s just a dumb slasher flick. And ask yourself who’s the narrator of this movie while you’re at it.
I completely disagree. I ask myself who the narrator is during this and it’s just a cheap “Usual Suspects” trick that takes all tension away from any repeat viewings because you know none of this is ACTUALLY happening. Things are scarier when they are permitted, within the rules of the movie, to be real.
What’s happening in pretty much *any* movie is Not Actually Happening;) We’re just watching somebody’s imagination, played by real people in real locations, but that doesn’t make the whole thing Real per se. All movies are like that (Lynch knows, he’d tell ya’;)), High Tension just dares to hammer that point home, unapologetically, not before tricking you into believing what you’re seeing is somehow real (even if only within the movie).
High Tension was tense the first time, but the rules change at the end, which transforms every next viewing. What, at first, seems to be a very traditional genre flick with a simple narrative is suddenly turned into a very “post-modern” movie with a psychoanalytical edge (cue somebody calling me pretentious). Of course people freaked out, all pissed off - everyone feels like that when the proverbial rug is pulled underneath their feet. But it’s their fault they felt balanced on that rug:)
It’s not the movie’s fault we’ve grown too “comfortable” with what we’re looking at on the screen (it’s funny we still do, in this day and age, after so many movies proving us we shouldn’t) - it’s our fault. Just because most of the movies follow a very traditional narative structure or just because Sixth Sense’s (and many others’) twist ending “falls into place” so nicely, that doesn’t mean that there are rules on how this should be done. High Tension is just not traditional and it’s not trying to be “comfortable” - it challenges the way we watch movies (which is nothing new in cinema and yet people are still complaining) and that’s not “cheap” in any way. People either accept the movie on its own terms or they don’t and hate it because it’s something they don’t want it to be.
There are no rules; there shouldn’t be any - especially not in horror movies. Not all movies are here to please us. And you/we should never ever *really* trust the narrator/director - especially not the one as clearly deranged as in High Tension:)
Hmmm…I dig what you’re saying about there being no rules. But individual movies set their own rules about their environment and when they betray those rules, it’s either a revelation that adds deeper understanding, or it comes off like a cheap trick. In this case, the reveal at the end changes everything you know for the worse. Like you said, on a repeat viewing, it’s no longer a first-person horror journey. You called it a ‘post-modern movie with a psychoanalytical edge.’ Ok, granted. But what I’m saying is that that same internal, psychological journey that you’re defending just doesn’t work. There is no suspense left knowing that you are watching someone’s invented “version” of what really happened, and it becomes a rather boring movie. The tension only exists if you believe the character is in danger. As soon as we know who she really is there a couple of clues for us to go “Oh, yeah, the director was trying to tell us that the whole time,” but the fact remains that the film turns into a cold, dead fish. Great discussion, by the way!
I enjoyed it the first time as a pure emotional roller-coster ride, now I enjoy it as movie about something “more” then that - as a movie that actually has something to say about the medium and the genre itself, instead of just offering us an hour and a half of suspense. There’s nothing wrong with that kind of simplicity in this genre, if done right, but High Tension is, just, not, that, kind, of a, movie:)
I could also argue that *all* (horror) movies change after the first viewing, since you then know where the ride will go and you know all the twists and turns. You can never experience that “first time” again. Especially so in High Tension which practically forces you to either watch it differently or hate it.
What was radical (and so awesome, to me) about High Tension is that its cruelest murder was the cold-blooded killing of our suspension of disbelief:) Most movies - intent on pleasing us, on giving us the Bang for our buck, on making us forget our lives for an hour - don’t have the guts to do that. It lured us in (with such exquisite flair and gusto, I might add) and then *bang*, “ha-ha, you’re watching a movie pal, wake up - I wasn’t the narrator, SHE was and she’s crazy!”:) We have no problem watching someone’s imagination turned into a movie but we can’t stand watching a movie *about* someone’s imagination - a movie that turns out to be told “through” imagination of an imagined character? Is that *really* any less real then a more traditional narative? High Tension challenges that (by no means the first time) and you either hate it for that (most of people) or love it (myself, for instance, as you’ve probably gathered hehe). It’s certainly not a “main-stream” movie, I’d say:)
Oh and one last thing before we just agree to disagree; I always though most of the killings we see in the movie were pretty much “real” so the ending shouldn’t really take much away - you just have to replace the homicidal maniac with a homicidal female maniac (and accept that some things were completely fabricated or twisted by her, the narrator). It’s of course open to interpretation, but, for me, High Tension (its story) is about a woman slowly coming to terms with her guilt, her Demon, her crime (that’s just a simple version - there’s also the whole gender angle and so on). In her troubled mind she tries to “frame” some unknown maniac for the crimes she did and make herself a victim, even a hero, but in the end, the truth comes through.