The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

At first glance, it seems that this appalling remake has no raison d'être other than Hollywoodian avariciousness. Sporting nearly identical villains, locales and narrative threads, it feels like a glossy reproduction of the original rather than an honest reworking. And while the slick new production values allow for more realistic monstrosity and elaborate new sets, they remain purely cosmetic updates on what is now a truly tired premise. It's only when the viewer lingers on the film's radical new politics of exclusion and chauvinism that the project finally finds meaning. And so the illusion of uselessness vanishes to reveal something much worse: pamphleteering hatred disguised as entertainment.

For me, the very idea of this new Hills Have Eyes meant a double blow to the head, being at once a travesty of Wes Craven's gritty source material and an irresistible bait for beloved director Alexandra Aja. Flown in from France only to unearth and gloss over a dusty old cult item, the man behind the unforgettable Haute Tension had thus become yet another money-making cog in the Hollywoodian sausage machine. It's a real shame too, since his entire creative team (complete with returning collaborators Grégory Levasseur and Baxter) were now hired as thoughtless restorers, repackaging cheap old material for profitable resale, but draining all its life energy in the process.  Here, the crisp photography and princely art direction contribute only to evacuate the original film's glib atmosphere, creating a shimmering spectacle out of what was a raw expression of horror. The same can be said about the slick new "fallout" mutants, unsightly creatures meant to elicit immediate hatred and the convenient signifiers of an historical mistake that needs to be undone. Fitted with a brutal new introduction, but deprived of some crucial later screen time, these monstrous new antagonists are a mere visual aid to help convey the film's apology of war-mongering hatred. Concision is also sacrificed here as this new version runs almost 20 minutes longer to include an intricate new finale that grotesquely hammers home its heinous contentions about the enemies of America. In fact, the entire exaltation of retaliatory violence conveyed by Aja's film comes in stark contrast with Craven's initial condemnation thereof, making the two iterations not twins but complete opposites.

Mutants are people too, y'know...

You should know exactly what to expect from this heap of garbage even before the opening credits start to roll. In their infinite misanthropy, the producers have indeed judged it necessary to tack on a new introduction allowing them to exalt physical determinism in order to ease us into their Manichean outlook on life. If one recalls the introductory shot of Craven's film, he will simply be reminded of silent hills at dusk, the intricacies of which merely hint at the presence of lurking monsters. And while it is crudely filmed, there's a certain subtlety to it, which is found completely lacking in the remake. Here, we are actually shown a white on black title card that reads:

"Between 1945 and 1962 the United States conducted 331 atmospheric nuclear tests. Today, the government still denies the genetic effects caused by the radioactive fallout..."

And as if that ominous warning was not sufficient to let us in on the overdetermined nature of the new "eyes in the hills", the following scene features a bunch of health officials in bio-hazard suits being brutally attacked by a hulking mutant wielding a pickaxe. Puncturing their flesh with the heavy steel pick, the villain then proceeds to lift their carcasses up above his head and smash them against rocks. While this sequence vies to provide the viewer with additional information about the film's antagonists, it actually obscures any attempt at a deeper understanding of their plight, using instead the dubious equation of monstrosity and nefariousness to pin them down as unrepentant antagonists. This point is hammered home with some evocative opening credits featuring archive footage of mushroom clouds and mutated fetuses. And while these images contribute to the film's overarching misanthropy by promoting physical determinism with the help of grating sound effects complementing the parade, their sheer pictorial quality leaves a lasting impression as a true testament to the horrors of nuclear warfare. And since they constitute the only novelty on display before the climactic confrontation, you might actually want to hang on to these images and cherish them.

After the credits, we are immediately thrown back unto the beaten path, with a strikingly similar Carter family halting their cross-country journey in a strikingly similar gas station as Craven's. And although the slick photography now gives a glamorous feel to the surrounding dirt roads and back houses, we feel right at home with what appears to be a returning cast of characters from a popular sitcom. I'm sure you remember the Carter family from before: Bob, Ethel, Lynn, Brenda, Bobby, Doug and their two dogs, Beauty and Beast, celebrating the parents' silver anniversary by going to California (and incidentally passing through the murderous New Mexico hills). The characters' names and their personas haven't changed much since the original film. The only difference is the fact that Lynn has now kept her maiden name after marrying Doug, remaining Lynn Carter instead of becoming Lynn Bukowski. Portrayed by a new cast of jobbers and TV actors (plus Ted Levine, whom I hardly recognized as the magnum-totting macho patriarch), these returning characters soon partake in a strikingly similar ordeal as their precursors. After deciding to take a dirt road through the hills, their trailer is ambushed and they are left stranded in inhospitable surroundings filled with prying mountain dwellers. When these unsightly barbarians brutally attack them, killing three and kidnapping Lynn and Doug's baby, the Carters rise up and decide to impose a similar brand of barbarity on their tormentors. In a nutshell, same family encounters same mutants in the same circumstances, leaving the horror fan biding his time until the final showdown in a decrepit fall-out town full of mutants. As for the slight variations in the story, they fail to alter the narrative progression significantly as they merely promote a sickly new angle from which to view pre-existing material.

Which version are we watching now?

If the present film is enlightening in any regard, it is with the spectacle of its ridiculous production history. Budgeted at 15,000,000$, roughly 60 times the amount it took to produce the original, this rich new remake perfectly exemplifies the shocking policies of Hollywoodian spend-o-crats. I mean, the film was shot in Morocco of all places! Morocco! What? Wasn't there any room left to shoot in New Mexico? Had promoters just bought the last stretch of land from California to Kansas? Perhaps it was that the producers couldn't find the ideal location to encompass their perfect vision of a mutant-led massacre. But then, couldn't they simply alter the screenplay instead of moving the entire film crew across the Atlantic? It's madness! And we're not talking about a naturalistic period piece here; we're talking about a shock-based horror film! I know this request to be futile, but couldn't B-series film be outfitted with B-series budgets? Doesn't that sound like a sound business decision?

I couldn't wrap my head around this at first. I couldn't think of any sound excuse to justify on-location shooting in Morocco. But then the dirty word "monopoly" came to mind, that is the possibility to spend money as absurdly as possible without ever risking to lose ground to your competitors. Such a warped conception of the free market economy is shockingly un-American, but then so is the widespread slavery to glamorous brand names that will keep Hollywood alive despite all of its past and future shortcomings. Personally, I think that promoting low-budget productions would be a fine way for Hollywood to recoup its losses from box office flops, further creating a pool of creative young talent to insure its sustainability. Just like in the good old days. For that to happen however, studio executives would have to relinquish some control over their productions and promote a diversity of styles and techniques, thus compromising the efforts of their marketing experts. But that will never happen. Not only is there no willingness to do so on the part of power-hungry studio heads, but there is no proper motivation either, since Hollywood is now "too big to fail" and remains completely untouched by the possibility of an eventual failure (government handouts being an easy and readily available solution in that event).

In the present case, a smaller crew working with natural settings could've easily done a better job at conveying horror and dread than the inflexible battalion actually at work on the project. And while big budgets and subsequent studio interference are obviously detrimental to the efficiency of any exploitation film, the very notion of "exploitation" tends to erode with the poisonous advent of political correctness. Actually, the staples of exploitation cinema are now being neutered and incorporated directly into the mainstream. This is exemplified by the recent apparition of the "torture porn" sub-genre. Absent from our vocabulary a mere twenty years back, this evocative new expression sums up both the exploitative nature and the viability of this  new trend as a commercial product. With the present film, we are given true insight as to the genre's actual power as object of mass consumption. Fitted with an underlying political message meant to aggressively stimulate the disintegrating patriotic fiber of bleeding-heart "liberals", the film was obviously made to corral as many viewers as possible under the banner of unabashed brutality. Hence it's polished look and vast marketing campaign. After all, everybody needs a glossy war poster for inspiration. Right?

Patriotic stabbings are a sure cure for left-wing apathy:

The Hills Have Eyes as war propaganda. 

Faced with such a soulless rehash, I found that using the war propaganda angle was actually the most satisfying way to give the film purpose and to analyze its dubious iconography. And while some may disagree with such a claim, the film contains ample evidence to support it, the search for which is the only worthy intellectual gymnastics allowed by this sorry exercise in repetition.  Released in March 2006, as support for the war in Iraq was hitting a nearly unprecedented low of 42%, the film uses crude  metaphors and the spectacle of primitive violence to elicit vengeful thoughts against the new enemies of the state, vying to stir up old passions amongst those who need it the most: Democrat pussies. Aside from the fact that the villains here are all mountain-dwelling guerilla fighters, the new screenplay contains a plethora of minute, but revealing updates meant to support a pro-war agenda:

a) The new opening scene. By equating physical difference with wickedness, the film crudely suggests that evil is only skin-deep, a simple matter of genetic differences between individuals. And while this straightforward sequence promotes a certain disdain for anything foreign, it also addresses the more revealing issue of American-made monstrosity. Being the result of military testing during the Cold War, the mutants here are the direct product of anti-Soviet American efforts. Which is exactly the same as Osama bin Laden and his clique, former Mujahideen fighters sponsored by the CIA to combat the Soviets in Afghanistan (as seen in Rambo III, another propaganda film meant to promote American interventionism abroad). And now, the mistakes of the past have come back to haunt us, and they need to be violently undone.

b) The premeditated nature of the Carters' accident. In Craven's film, Bob Carter insists on taking the scenic route through the hills and subsequently loses control of his vehicle during an argument with his wife. In the new version, the Carters are lured away from the main road by a cunning gas attendant, and their car is ambushed by the family of mutants. Thus, the antagonists' actions are now fully premeditated, and not simply circumstantial, leaving absolutely no nuance as to their nefarious intentions. Such a Manichean new outlook on the initial attack subsequently greatly helps warrant the Carters' retaliatory strike.

c) Doug's new left-wing persona. Being described onscreen as a left-wing "pussy" and thoroughly despised by tough patriarch Bob, son-in-law Doug is now characterized as a liberal softie. Mocked for his reverent attitude toward his wife (the man is said to have lost his balls to her) and his lack of proficiency with firearms, Doug has become a grotesque parody of Yankee war protesters. And while  he eventually finds redemption, it is only through primitive violence, "evolving" into the blood-soaked mass murderer of the final scene and "heroic" defender of traditional American values (family and country). This new iconography allows the film to question the actual moral rectitude of left-wing activists by confronting them with the perspective of foreign violence hitting home, their subsequent contention being that any human being would readily take arms to avenge the brutal death of his own family. Previously explored in Death Wish (1974) and other such conservative genre efforts, this intriguing idea is herein meant as a rallying cry for well-thinking, but uninvolved "liberals" who protest the war from a comfortable distance without grasping its more primitive origins.

The left-wing peace activist as "debunked" by
the people at beforeitsnews.com, where godsent
dreams are regarded as facts...

d) The new finale. Set in a nuclear test town from the 1950s, the climactic confrontation between Doug and the antagonistic mutants does not provide mere narrative closure, but a symbolic cleansing of hallowed ground. Featuring dusty old homesteads populated by limbless mannequins arranged in typical family scenes, the makeshift town has become a grotesque parody of Americana under the rule of the mutants, who mock tradition by transforming dinner tables in ghoulish canvas of rotting human flesh, making raunchy sculptures from disarticulated mannequins, filling meat lockers with pickled limbs, even cynically intoning the Star-Spangled Banner. Such shocking defilement is fortunately punished accordingly, with the death sentence happily carried out by shotgun-totting Doug and the Carter family dog, another traditional symbol and defender of American values.

e) The new ending. Contrary to the first, this new ending actually glamorizes the violence perpetrated by the protagonist. Originally comprised of a disturbing fade to red following a shot of Doug's distorted features as he clubs the last villain to death, the final few frames of the film now boast heroic trumpets sounding the return of the battered hero as he emerges from a wall of flames after vanquishing all the desert-dwelling mutants who threatened his family. This radical change in imagery provides the most salient break with the source material, which equated the protagonists' violence with that of the antagonists. Here, the protagonists' violence is validated by the antagonists', making the rationale of retaliatory war completely unproblematic.

f) The American flag. One of the most blatant new symbols in the film is the small American flag mounted on the Carter's truck. Stolen from the vehicle by the mutants and later stuck in the cranium of carbonized patriarch Bob in a grotesque mockery of his values, this flag is thus symbolically defiled by infidels. Luckily, it is later re-appropriated by Doug, and used to puncture the throat of an enemy, thus reclaiming its rightful place as defender of American values.

Restoring the veneer of the American flag is reason enough
to join the warpath. (This image was taken from right-wing
blog Moonbattery.com where you can learn more about
the treacherous nature of the American left-wing).

By using all of its narrative updates to promote the War on Terror, this reprehensible remake actually finds another function than its ability to generate money out of thin air, becoming a temporary war poster, but a lasting example of Hollywood's appropriation of dissident discourse. Yesterday, "exploitation" was a way for radical new voices to showcase the true extent of our freedom of speech, depicting violence not as something glamorous and romantic, but as something raw and primitive. During that era, young filmmakers used exploitation to show that revenge is a coin with two identical sides. Craven's The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes as well as other (rape-) revenge classics such as I Spit on your Grave (1978) made a direct equation of both the protagonists' and antagonists' barbarity, cleverly confronting us with the horror and uselessness of retaliatory violence and challenging our preconceptions about the actual worth of violence. Today, as exploitation is slowly seeping into mainstream culture, its aims are now regulated by the powers that be, causing the disappearance of such cautionary tales and the advent of a purely Manichean paradigm from which the roots of hatred can spring forth unchallenged.

1/5   Nearly identical to the original, the present remake brings nothing new to the table but a disturbing misanthropy. 

Piranha (2010)

First off, let me tell you this about Alexandre Aja's Piranha: seeing it in 2D isn't really seeing it. The piranhas are much less lively, the puke and buckshot thrown in your face lack relevance and the naked underwater ballet loses much of its impact on account of the flattening of curves. The truth is that the arduous transition back to the original two dimensions of filmmaking is a necessary blowback to the successful use of the 3D technology during shooting. And it is the burden of all films shot in 3D since these films contain many artificially textured elements while also using a seemingly expended depth of field to create effects that tend to lose all meaning once our depth perception comes back to normal. For example, a shot containing only one piranha swimming in the forefront of the frame can be impressive when you see it in 3D because the creature will appear to graze you, but the same shot is relatively boring and useless when seen in plain 2D, given the distance that now separates you from the mosnter. The same is true for all shots containing elements thrown from the background to the foreground of the frame such as puke regurgitated overboard, a shotgun shell splitting into pellets, a beer glass thrown at a Pixies shirt or a severed penis burped out by a piranha, all elements which come to lose their apparent velocity in space and sudden proximity to the viewer once in 2D, failing to truly involve you and thus losing their shock value. All these things are still fun to watch, but the experience thereof is much lessened by the transition and I'm sure you will automatically make a comparison unfavorable to the DVD if you've seen both versions. Personally, I congratulate myself for having bought a ticket while the 3D version was still in theaters. It is that version, and that version only which I continue to cherish in my mind. Unfortunately for those who haven't had the chance to buy a ticket like I did, I'm sorry to have to tell you that you've missed your chance to see a surprisingly great horror film in the way it makes sense. To further put salt on the wound, I will admit that the film's use of the third dimension is the best I've ever seen, especially considering the naked underwater ballet, which turns out to be surprisingly underwhelming in the 2D version as the streaks of light now fail to highlight the lovely curves of the two babes wearing only flippers and their divinely graceful movement in space loses its fluidity. Let this be a lesson to all: if there's a 3D film that you really want to see, pay the price instead of complaining for this might be your only chance to really appreciate it.

If this baby grazed you, you'd be shitting your pants

The story of Piranha is set in Lake Victoria (located in Southern USA), where one species of fish is discovered that will have equally devastating effects on the world as the Nile Perch. The main plot focuses on the Forester family (single mom Julie, teenager Jake and the two kids, Laura and Zane) who must all deal in their own ways with a ruthless attack by prehistoric piranhas unearthed from an underground lake when Richard Dreyfuss dropped a beer bottle to the bottom of a crevasse dedicated to Mesolithic digging. Now this wouldn't be so bad, a massive flock of flesh-eating fishes invading the lake, except that when it does is smack in the middle of spring break during which another invasion takes place, that of city jocks coming down to party by the beach. Right after Dreyfuss is munched to death, using the last of his strength to raise a mangled hand above the water (and showcase the great quality of the special effects), we are quickly, but efficiently introduced to all the important characters. Julie (Elisabeth Shue) is the though town sheriff enforcing the law with an iron fist in a velvet glove. When we first meet her, she is writing a ticket to a party dude who destroyed a post with his car. As the dude complains, like a whiny bitch I must add, she suggests that he just take the ticket, else she might take out the breathalyzer and have him jailed. And that's as far as her sense of humor goes for when the dude starts getting a bit too friendly, she grabs him in a nice hammerlock and whips out a nasty-looking taser to discourage any reckless bystander from getting involved in the arrest. Meanwhile, all the way across town, her son Jake (Steven R. McQueen, grandson of you know who and stepson of hockey hall of famer Luc Robitaille (!)) fails to show the same bravery and self-confidence when he randomly meets love interest Kelly (Jessica Szohr) while on his way to pick up his sister. After a very short, jittery exchange during which we take a definite clue as to their puppy love, Jake loses Kelly to a bunch of silly-looking surfer types in a silly-looking dune buggy who also throw a glass full of beer at his shirt. Luckily for Jake, things quickly take a turn for the best as he finds his sister Laura (Brooklynn Proulx) chatting with attractive British "wild girl" Danni (shapely Kelly Brook) who happens to be waiting for coked-up "girls gone wild" film director Derrick Jones (Jerry O'Connell). When the guy shows up, he instantly summarizes all of the flamboyant overacting techniques that will come to characterize him throughout the film (super-speedy flow, manic jitter, ample gestures and carefully choreographed warmth). And conveniently enough, this Derrick character is in desperate need of a "local" to show him and his girls the way around the lake for a shoot scheduled for the following day, selecting bystander Jake as "his man" for the job. The young man takes but a glance at Danni's warm smile and becomes wholeheartedly convinced to come along, as any guy would be. Given this divine opportunity, Jake thus finds a way to evade his babysitting duties by bribing his younger brother and sister, then elopes to Derrick's boat on the following day, where he eventually becomes stranded with a token cameraman, love interest Kelly, two bombshells (Brook + porn star Riley Steele) and the increasingly aggressive Derrick. During this time, his mom is busy trying to solve the mystery of the prehistoric piranhas while young Paula and Zane find a way to get trapped on an island separated from land by a thin, piranha-filled strip of water. When the family comes together again, it will be in dire circumstances. Oh yeah, and there's also a bunch of partying teenagers near the beach. Anybody said "fish food"?

The increased budget of this remake allows for far

superior depictions of fish food

Yes, you read that correctly: the film showcases a huge underground lake containing lively prehistoric piranhas which are awakened by one of Richard Dreyfuss' beer bottles. Well, it isn't Richard Dreyfuss per se but an expandable character he portrays, the first victim, but also the first wink flashed at us by the production team. Actually both his cameo and the premise involving an earth-shattering beer bottle are winks directed squarely at film critics who have had their fill of dead-serious horror films that forgot how to be fun. This film however, is pure camp, but it is willfully assumed camp. And there's no better way to sell you a narrative wherein beach bunnies are attacked by piranhas. By realizing this simple fact, the production team demonstrates a rare virtue amongst contemporary genre filmmakers from Hollywood, self-awareness. This is a cardinal virtue for any horror filmmaker working in the present era of mindless plagiarism (read "endless multiplication of remakes and sequels") and here, it fuels the film more than adequately for its 200 mph race to the finish (which is a great, campy cliffhanger, one even superior to that in Joe Dante's version). Seeing how their basic idea was ludicrously far-fectched, Aja and crew decided to go all out and craft a completely over-the-top film, allowing their ludicrous working material to make perfect sense while completely fulfilling its viewers in the process. The showmanship necessary to sell you beach-busting piranhas thus finds its reflection in the showmanship demonstrated across the board and which materializes in the top-notch casting and rare sense of spectacle deriving from the ample showcasing of nudity and gore.

Aside from Dreyfuss, one of the survivor of Jaws (1975), whom is killed in the very first scene (thus establishing the Piranhas' superiority to the outdated great white shark), the film contains many other savvy casting choices. As far as overacting goes, there are lots of specialists here, most notably the always reliable fan favorite Christopher Lloyd who gives the old "Doc Brown" routine a new life and the manic Eli Roth, armed here with two super-soakers to squirt water at girls' tits while enumerating an impressive array of synonyms for breasts. Roth's character, the host of a wet t-shirt competition set on a huge raft filled with girls, along with Jerry O'Connell's Derrick Jones are both shockingly exacerbated machos who get more than their rightful retribution for disrespecting women once the action starts. These two despicable, unsympathetic individuals make for very enjoyable kills and this is due in great part to the quality of their characterization. Actually, every character here is cast with great flair. Elisabeth Shue, who still looks fine in a beige deputy uniform, makes for an empathic heroine while Ving Rhames is, as usual, the perfect bad-ass. Kelly Brook (FHM's sexiest woman of 2005, if such references can enlighten you) is obviously ideal casting as the sympathetic wild girl, especially since she agreed to shed all of her clothes for the film. As for the remaining cast, you will note that Jessica Szohr plays here what is essentially a version of Vanessa from Gossip Girls, allowing the young actress to remain in a certain comfort zone while providing the necessary amount of puke to earn her rightful place in the film. As for Steven McQueen, well, he is Steve McQueen's grandson! What more do you want? Casting-wise, the only problem for me was the untimely death of Dina Meyer's character. Maybe it's just the trivial fact that I saw Starship Troopers on the night I first saw Piranha, but damn, I hate to see the girl die! She's great! Why does she have to suffer so unjustly (1) all the time? Here, she is part of a scientific team meant to explore the underwater lake opened by the accidental rift from the first scene. This team is decimated in a matter of minutes, but not without first allowing us a trip down to an impressive underwater cave filled with bunches of translucent red globes containing the living embryos of piranhas. Eventually, Dina's death is narratively relevant for there's a piranha still munching on her flesh when her mangled body is hauled onboard by the protagonists, a piranha that will remain the protagonists' captive until it is dropped into one of the large tanks in Christopher Lloyd's impressive aquarium. Thus, poor Dina is nothing more than piranha bait. And that's a real shame...

Piranha boasts one of the most spectacular cast ever assembled

Since Piranha is a loud celebration of genre film as spectacle, the brilliant casting extends also t0 the attractive extras filling the background with their ample curves and hard muscles. Their flesh bears the double function of enticing viewers with its youthful perfection while also disgusting them with its eventual massacre. These extras are an integrant part of the film's efficiency deriving from its careful observance of the simple mathematics central to American horror. The main operation is obvious: you take a generic, immediately intelligible narrative framework, then add gore and nudity to the mix. Here, it is achieved through the successful mix of the conventional family drama with girls gone wild and over-the-top gore, all three elements brought to their wildest extremities. Hence, we get to see nice-looking, half-naked youths in bathing suits, but we also get to marvel at full frontal female nudity (which is a nice change of pace from Hollywood's recent obsession with revealing penises), Dantesque depictions of suffering and one dramatic tableau that's sure to bring families together: a mother and her two small children, all dangling on a wire above a rock-spiked, piranha-filled lake shore. Everything here is exacerbated just the way it should be. You can thus appreciate the fact that most girls who die don't do so until they have shown their breasts. Two cases in point: the topless gliding girl, whom we get to see from every possible angle before she is half-eaten upon touching the infested waters and the sawed-off girl whom is cut lengthwise by a flying wire to have her top fall off first , and then, her body split in two. Exacerbated also are the character types. In diametral opposition within the narrative are the wholesome, naive townsfolk from Spielbergian films and the obnoxious, uncaring outsiders who pollute the lake with garbage without the slightest afterthought. Smack in the middle of these opposite character types is gorgeous Danni, the sympathetic wild girl, who is first blessed with unforeseen refinement precisely because of her belonging to both groups but then revealed to be merely instrumental to the plot. All this polarization might seem almost Manichean, but it works superbly here. You see, the bimbos and buff dudes gathered together on the beach to listen to annoying dance music and bask in their awesomeness are exactly what they have made themselves to be, namely meat jiggling about for the first predator around to bite into. Now, whereas the original Piranhas attacked mostly sympathetic characters, most notably young campers (including the protagonist's daughter), this new version shows almost only rich, obnoxious teenagers biting the big one. The focus thus shifts away from terror toward pure spectacle. The attacks on humans are not meant to create affect anymore, they're now merely a celebration of death and mayhem. The truth is, such humans can't possibly create affect. They're merely objects for the look and by the time they get shredded to bits, they have outlived their usefulness. We have taken a good look at their half-naked beach bodies and so their raison d'être has vanished into oblivion. All of this mostly liberates the viewer from moral concerns and lets him enjoy the superior special effects fully. With its exploding heads, maelstroms of fangs, legs eaten to the bone, bodies ripping in half, faces ripped-off, piranhas bursting through half-eaten heads and mangled penises, the film revels in excess, enhancing the specularity of the original and eventually inscribing Aja's name in neon letters within this, the culture of excess, wherein five pounds is not heavy enough for a breast and where a bucket of blood demands another. This is all achieved first and foremost because the makers of this film were thoroughly conscious of what they were doing and how they should proceed to do it. This is not rocket science we're talking about here but rather spectacle, pure spectacle, without any emotional involvement that could disrupt our eager anticipation of blood and flesh.

Unlike Aja's remake of The Hills Have Eyes (1977), this new offering is a re-working of the original from the ground up. You might actually say that it is an entirely original film, sharing with the Roger Corman production only the basic idea of piranhas attacking bathing hotties. The premise is not at all the same, the characters are completely different, the narrative is stand-alone and the piranha attacks are handled in a much more contemporary, more spectacular way. It is only if you look really, really close that you will see small, cosmetic similarities between the two versions. So unlike my review for Aja's The Hills Have Eyes, this one here will not simply direct you to the previous version. Far from it. I am actually very enthusiastic about the film, ever since I walked out of the empty theater where I first saw it, my heart full with content memories of the erotically entwined bodies of Kelly Brook and Riley Steele. To me, all remakes should be done like Piranha was, by using the basic idea but injecting a more contemporary narrative around it and enhancing the wow factor. After all, you have to remember that classics never die and that their ghosts will forever haunt those who try to rip them off. And thus every remake, and every literary adaptation for that matter, will automatically force comparison with the source material, usually pushing viewers to concede superiority to whatever came first. There are not many exceptions to this. David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly (1986) immediately comes to mind, but then you start scratching your head trying to think of more. And although the new Piranha isn't head and shoulders above the original, I would grant it a slight edge considering the sheer scope of the spectacle contained within. Thankfully, the superior budget is invested directly in fan service. The viewer literally finds himself amidst a sea of breasts, many of which are fully revealed by a lustful camera managing one of the most impressive, and unlikely exploit ever caught on film: capturing the erotic ballet performed underwater by two stunning beauties wearing only flippers. Then, there are the magnified sets wherein the magnified piranha attacks take place. Both the sets and the depiction of mangled bodies are incredibly elaborate, making for one truly epic scene of carnage taking place near the beach where the partying teenagers have amassed in a large fleet of boats and rubber trips. The state-of-the-art CGI effects allow the creation of truly effective, surprisingly lifelike piranha attacks, which the sound now nicely complements (unlike in the original film). And although the climactic finale is slightly derivative of the original, it is far superior in terms of excitement. The tension is palpable now as Jake throws himself in the water to save Kelly trapped in a sinking boat. Seeing how the piranhas can rip entire people to shreds in a matter of instants, every second passed underwater adds to the excruciatingly unnerving experience we share with the two young people. As for the propane gas explosion they narrowly avoid, this is pure A action film stuff. What's even more impressive than all these exhilarating action bits is that the film even manages to add some neat technical novelties in order to better frame them, such as the half-submerged frame wherein you see both the panicking protagonists in the upper half and the incoming piranhas in the lower half. This creates unfathomable tension while keeping everything within a single frame, thus illustrating just how efficient and generous with scares the filmmaking here truly is.

The increased budget allows the creation of epic scenes of carnage

With this film, Aja and crew give us a lesson in genre filmmaking for the dawning decade. They don't waste time coming up with a plausible premise, simply using a spectacular one instead and buttering it with many layers of campy characters and dialogues. And if the campiness of the film is a crucial indicator of its efficiency, it is precisely because the evolution of the genre pertains only to the cultivation of excess and the subsequent excision of morality. Hence, Piranha is to horror films what Crank (2006) was to action films. Both films are self-conscious exercises in genre purification and the glorification of mindless but sensually effective filmmaking. Both use ludicrously far-fetched premises to anchor the narrative in a logic-defying world of fantastic excitement. Both have fully embraced their purely entertaining nature, not merely grazed it with the tip of their fingers. Both understand what they are and use this knowledge in order to transcend the shackles of realism and plausibility which are dragging down fine series of pulp fantasy such as the Batman and James Bond series straight into the pit of self-satisfied overwriting and toward the realm of unfathomable and excruciating boredom. Concerning the new Nolan-directed Batman and its recent announcing of Anne Hathaway as the umpteenth iteration of Catwoman, I will say this: although there's little that sounds more appealing to me than the idea of Hathaway in any sort of cat-inspired attire, I will definitely not suffer 2+ hours of smutty, boring material just to get a few glimpses at her. I would rather rent Love and Other Drugs (2010) instead, which should tell you a lot about what I think of the current trend of gritty reboots. As for Aja's Piranha, it is for me a beacon of hope in an otherwise dark and dreary world that lets me believe in the liveliness of fantasy in cinema and the ability of Haute Tension's director to transcend the rigid framework he has had to work with since Hollywood absorbed him.

3/5 A truly spectacular, stand-alone remake.

(1) [contains spoilers] In the Saw series, poor Dina is strapped in a cruelly inescapable trap that she manages to solve only to die in the following moments. Even worst is how she is sacrificed in Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers. Despite being one of the two leads, her character is killed immediately after having sex with Casper Van Dien's Rico, being effectively removed from the narrative in order to eliminate any moral dilemma pertaining to Rico courtship of Denise Richards' Carmen. And when I say 'sex', I mean a 20-minutes quickie in a tent on a hostile planet full of giant bugs. Never, ever was I so pissed off by the death of a character, especially since she dies of a real cheap shot from behind. And now I've got to see her getting shred to bits by piranhas? Hell no! Honestly, I'm now one step away from creating the "Stop killing Dina Meyer" foundation...

Haute Tension (2003)

For me, the New Wave of French horror began with a still from Haute Tension taken from the program of the 2004 Fantasia film festival. A square photo featuring gorgeous Cécile de France in a particularly fetching, tight white shirt that prominently features her apparently perfect breasts. Large streaks of blood stain her entire left side, including her slender arm. Her face is gashed and bleeding. But most importantly, she is wielding a very large circular saw. The weapon is huge against her small frame and it appears all the more deadly. In my copy of the program, I have circled it with a pen, and particularly the blade, which has a thick blue ring around it. Paler strands of blue are etched up to Cécile's belly. There is even a big blue arrow pointing at the blade. I have also underlined part of a quote from the TIFF's program. It simply reads: "one of the most brutal horror films of the new century" (C. Geddes). As you can see, my original enthusiasm for the film came only from a cropped photo and a bit of text... both of which explicitely held the promise of brutality. What I truly wanted to see was Cécile chopping people up with a large circular saw. I didn't care whether she played a good or bad character. I just wanted what the French are now so consistently offering us: girls and gore. Drop-dead gorgeous girls and nasty, brutal gore, which is what all contemporary pop horror should be about. Think about it for a second: why do people watch horror films? Don't kid yourself. They watch horror films for girls and gore. So why not give it to them? Personally, I was amazed with Neil Marshall's The Descent (2005) and I loved the fact that it featured an all-female cast. Call me what you will, a misogynist who enjoys seeing women suffer or whatnot, and you will be wrong. I'm just a guy. I like to see athletic actresses in wet spelunking outfits. Is that so hard to understand? Eros and Thanatos must walk hand in hand in order to create a truly affective horror film. And that's precisely why the French are now world leaders when it comes to horror cinema. Period.

Just my kind of girl

Embraced by gorehounds and film critics alike, Haute Tension constituted a breakthrough for director Alexandre Aja, who was soon approached, then absorbed by Hollywood where he shot two remakes (The Hills Have Eyes and Piranha) as well as a lame Kiefer Sutherland vehicle (Mirrors). Despite the appreciable input by returning collaborators Grégory Levasseur and Baxter who made the trip across the pond with him, Aja failed to recapture the brilliance of Haute Tension, although he came closest with his latest film, Piranha, which featured the single greatest 3D sequence in all of film history. I'm talking of course about the naked underwater ballet featuring Kelly Brook and Riley Steele. Even then, with those two flawless bodies hovering erotically in weightlessness, he didn't come close to the unbridled sensuality of Haute Tension. Not to mention the near flawlessness and relevance of its screenplay. Truly, Aja's is a case where a director will forever chase his initial masterpiece, one that will forever elude his grasp, especially if since he is now contrived by the huge Hollywoodian system and its network of censoring agents and prude lobbyists. As things stand, we will simply wish that he keeps turning out grandiose, over-the-top gore films such as Piranha while keeping a copy of Haute Tension (known elsewhere in the world under the vastly superior title Switchblade Romance) on all of our shelves for further reference. Sorry Alex, but it seems like the weight of the world has gotten to you too.

Haute Tension focuses mainly on the relationship and sexual tension between two French college girls, Marie and Alex. They are the best of friends, but unbeknownst to Alex, Marie is also in love with her. When the pair hits the country for a weekend of quiet study at Alex's family cottage, they are soon disturbed by a particularly brutal killer (played to perfection by legendary Philippe Nahon) who slaughters the family and kidnaps Alex. As the knight-in-shining-armor that she wishes to be, Marie chases the killer in order to save her princess. That's the basic storyline. Lean and mean stuff, my friends, lean and mean stuff containing nothing in the way of convoluted explanations or counter-productive plot twists. Of course, from where you stand, that is if you haven't already seen the film, it probably sounds corny and done to death. But that's precisely how it gets you: by laying out a very conventional framework and making you question its relevance, not only in regards to genre, but most importantly, in regards to gender. That said, setting up both a female heroine and a female victim is not an innocent move. Not innocent at all. Especially since there is a romance involved, and a very complex one at that. Not only is this a treat for the audience (not having to suffer dumb, brawny guys), but it also constitutes a welcome break from some of the most enduring horror movie conventions, namely those that tend to promote rigid gender roles and archetypical characters such as the damsel in distress or sacrificial woman. It further transforms the archetype of the virginal heroine into something tremendously more ambiguous and interesting. And there is much more gender confusion along the way that I will not spoil but which will undoubtedly complicate any psychoanalytical reading of the film. While challenging horror movie conventions, this gender confusion seems to act also as a radar scrambler for pissed-off feminists, some of whom seem to enjoy female victimization as it helps validate their rigid theories. All this makes the film a true gem for horror film analysts, which is probably why I get such a kick out of it. And which is probably why I grant it such a high rating. Both the film critic and the horror fan in me have a huge boner for this film. And I do not use the term lightly.

Psychoanalytical perdition: Cécile de France reaching

for an outstretched phallus

The play on gender conventions is the film's greatest asset. This includes all nullifying effects that its central gender confusion has on the attempts to make psychoanalytical readings of the film (as well as on the shameful tagging of phallic/non-phallic weapons). But there is also a major point to be made for the near perfection of the screenplay and devilishly competent direction that allows the filmmakers to craft a work of rare concision. Clocking in at a lean 91 minutes, Haute Tension is extremely dense and wholly relevant. Just like Cécile's luscious body, it contains not one ounce of fat. The are some mild narrative inconsistencies here and there, but these are necessary to keep the spectators guessing. Other than that, the screenplay is flawless. Just consider the post-credit sequence as a case-example. Within a couple of minutes, it manages to set up an extremely complex and brilliantly exposed relationship of attraction/repulsion between the two main characters. In that regards, the car is a perfect stage for this opening sequence as it provides not only a valid narrative starting point (since the girls are on their way from the city to the country), but also a plethora of potential camera positions allowing many degrees of separation between the two women. The small bit of exposition we experience during their short ride, although it might appear as a mere exchange of platitudes, is actually very telling as it ties the opening 'dream' sequence to the narrative and, through a savvy use of framing (and over-framing), describes with utmost sensibility the high-strung emotional nature of those two characters' relationship. In the end, you need not look much further for character development as it is all here, and all done cinematographically, not theatrically. The fact is that there is actually very little screen time in the film dedicated to character development, but that screen time is used with such intelligence that it easily propels the film to where it needs to be in the budding moments of the main drama, while avoiding the need for traditional expository devices (there is usually at least half a dozen minutes in every horror film that's wasted early on for clumsy expository dialogue). Add to that a pivotal scene of nudity, and one of masturbation (both featuring bits of superb female bodies) and you've got all the exposition you need. And we immediately move on to the massacre!

Alex is sleeping and Marie is wiggling her slender fingers underneath her jeans when mysterious headlights appear on the horizon. A dirty brown truck pulls up to the cottage and a creepy blue collar guy disembarks. And when I say 'blue collar', I mean the most disgusting, most extreme incarnation of them. You don't need to look twice to figure out that he's the killer, and you don't have to wait long for confirmation either. Now, I won't fully disclose what happens in the cottage, but I will tell you this: the first two executions are amongst the most surprisingly original and satisfying in recent years. They were a huge hit at Fantasia, where I saw the film the first two times. People were screaming and clapping like crazy. Personally, I had my mind blown. And there wasn't anyone with whom I saw the film later on who didn't make some sort of gasping noise upon seeing those delicious atrocities. And thus we are introduced to the killer, a disgusting, dirty man who destroys Alex's whole family in the most brutal way possible, then kidnaps the pretty young woman. This man is truly a virile mammoth who dwarfs heroine Marie by making her appear frail and fragile in comparison. He's an overwhelming yang to her puny yin. And Nahon makes a damn good job of bringing him to life, grinning nastily to reveal dirty teeth and talking in a husky and self-assured voice that greatly contrasts with Marie's. His fat, red cheeks, his hairy hands, dirty nails and greasy clothes, everything about him reeks of unbridled masculinity whereas Marie is purely feminine. The only area in which she has the upper hand is in the size of their respective weapons: whereas the killer carries only a tiny switch-blade, Marie wields a butcher's knife. Again, this situation would indicate that everything is in its right, but it is actually not since the rigid gender gap between heroine and villain will come to be totally redefined during the course of the film. Suffice it to say that Marie uses this confrontation to gain some confidence in herself and reassert her own identity. This leads to a very, very brutal and visceral confrontation between herself and Alex's captor, both of whom share one thing: sexual desire for the poor, victimized girl. But both of whom are exact opposites: disgusting and brutal man-beast vs clean and virginal girl. In the end however, you will find that they both bleed the same red blood... and they bleed it in pints!

Talk about a beastly motherfucker (Philippe Nahon as le tueur)

Now I'd like to add a few words about the soundtrack. Although it might appear bare at first, it actually plays a crucial part in setting up the story and exposing the characters' motivations. The use of Didier Barbelivien's atrocious ballad, À toutes les filles (que j'ai aimées avant) [literal translation: To All the Girls (That I Have Loved Before)] as the killer's theme song is nothing short of brilliant as it sets him up to be no more than a retarded teenager in the body of a hulk. It makes him that much more unpredictable and cruel, while suggesting a very long career of female abduction. More brilliant even is the choice of Runaway Girl by U-Roy as the song Marie listens to while masturbating. At once, it summarizes the protagonist's angst and foreshadows her transformation into the knight-in-shining armor. Again, if we consider the soundtrack as another cornerstone of narrative construction, we can see how concise the film really is, using every bit of space available to insert material relevant to the plot. And remember, most of this narrative construction is done in a purely cinematographic fashion (using framing, editing, sound...), and not in the traditional theatrical fashion (using only dialogue). Truly, here is a rare achievement in recent horror film history.

Although I would love to write a lengthier (and meatier) article about this awesome film, I couldn't do so without spoiling it for the viewer. Moreover, I could start boring my readers at with this overwhelming passion of mine. I will thus simply recommend you see Haute Tension right away. And although some of the finer French expressions might be lost in the translation, you should nonetheless be able to appreciate the technical flawlessness of this film as well as its outstanding brutality. For any gorehound out there, it comes highly recommend without any after-thought. For those of you whom I have not yet convinced, I suggest you watch the film two times. It's short and there's bound to be many things you can appreciate in there, if only the naked body of Maïwenn LeBesco. In my book, Haute Tension easily earns a top 5 spot in the Best Horror Films of the 00s, coming just short of Tomas Alfredson's sublime adaptation of John Lindqvist's novel, Let the Right One In (2008).

4/5 A perfectly crafted horror film that's simple and effective, with plenty of gore and gender confusion. A treat to both the film analyst and the casual horror fan.