High Tension and the Importance of Good Sound

Watched High Tension this weekend and was very impressed. High quality Horror film! What I liked so much about it (and the other “realistic” horror movies I’ve seen recently, like Open Water and The Descent) is that the people in the movies mainly act like normal people. They don’t go wandering off by themselves into the darkness, and there’s a distinct lack of "red shirts" . This (relative: we are talking horror films here) realism draws you into the story and makes you more emotionally involved in the story, whereas bad horror films (like Cabin Fever, to name a recent example) that don’t have this attachment, are the ones that lead in unintentional comedy. I wasn’t personally sold by the plot twist, but it was fun, and I sure has hell didn’t see it coming. The whole movie is helped out by the easy-on-the-eyes protagonist Cécile de France.

The other thing I realized as I watched the movie is how important sound design is to horror films, or any films that hope to build up the tension. In horror movies in particular, there often isn’t a lot of action as one of the victims is hiding from a killer, or is staring in shock at something horrible that has occurred, or is witnessing a horrible death, and if the sounds are not just right, the whole thing loses its power. For instance, in High Tension, there are several brutal murders that take place in almost absolute silence, and so the sounds that the director chose for the eviscerations are the ones that really drive home the event to you.