Director:
Fracnk Khalfoun
Writers:
Alexandre Aja
Gregory Levasseur
Have you ever been in one of those underground parking lots late at night? Imagine that you get stuck in that situation, the doors are closed and the only way out is for you to wait until morning. But what if that wasn't your biggest problem? That's the situation in which our main character got herself into.
Plot story: It follows a workaholic Angela that got stuck in a multi-level underground parking garage in New York on a Christmas Eve. But she didn't get stuck by an accident. There was somebody down there with her, somebody that wanted to share this Christmas with her.
The movie quickly moves from the introduction to tension and action. Angela, was one of the last people to leave work, she promised her family that she would be at their place in 20 minutes or so . She got packed and was on her way to the underground garage. There was nothing unusual about it until a serious of events got her stuck in the building. It all looked like a series of unfortunate events until the security guard from the parking lot showed his true intentions. From that point the movie keeps your attention by an interesting dialogue and scenes. Direction and photography is nicely done followed by great acting. Wes Bently successfully embodied the character of the psychotic man and again proved he got skills just as he had shown in his first more memorable performances in the classic American Beauty. Rachel Nichols also put the great performance embodying strong and brave woman fighting for survival, and off course while doing that she was successfully using her physical attributes to let us know how brave she really is (even Liz noticed that :) ).
There are not too many characters in this movie and the only location is that parking garage. That sounds like the breath of fresh air, but unfortunately, that remained the only original thing. The play of cat and mice is "been there done that" kind of scenario which includes all possible events of saving your ass and we guarantee that you have already seen most of them at least once (The Hitcher, When a stranger Calls are just a few of the examples of that kind of movies). Not to be very harsh, this movie was undeniably entertaining and what more could you want from your average psycho, busty chick victim, evil dog and a garage? Well, maybe that's the main problem of the movie. The idea sounded interesting and the movie which could have been done in 30 or so minutes had been prolonged on purpose which consequently led to a drop in tension and too many absurd situations which didn't make any sense. So the problem with this movie is that though it has some good and thrilling moments, which you might enjoy (but only if you don't take it too seriously), is the missing dynamic. That means that the movie becomes diluted almost 40 minutes before the ending, and the absurd scenes start coming at you in waves. For example our psycho can teleport, read minds, fix remote cameras that had been destroyed a few minutes earlier etc. On top of that he is an Elvis Presley impersonator :). If it weren't for his tendencies to kill people we would be even willing to hang out with this guy :). In other words he is not scary, he is a clumsy guy that needs a girlfriend and has a wrong way of showing his needs.
All in all we don't know if here is an unintentional presence of a black humor, but we sincerely hope it isn't so judging by the previous works of this coordinated trio (funny credits may also confirm this conclusion). That would be the only excuse of making this movie which, in the best case scenario, could be taken as a guilty pleasure type of slasher flick.
If you, however, seek for a clever, twisted horror movie (which Haute Tension at least tried to be) with a dose of goreness (spoiled by the brilliantly done The Hills Have Eyes) skip this one because here you won't find any of these. To give it a neat finishing touch they could have at least revived Tom one more time at the ending.
Did I say Tom? Ups, Tom really hates when someone calls him by his name. I'll stop here and leave Tom alone. Sorry Tom :)
Our score:
Liz: 5.5/10
Kyle: 5/10
Plot story: It follows a workaholic Angela that got stuck in a multi-level underground parking garage in New York on a Christmas Eve. But she didn't get stuck by an accident. There was somebody down there with her, somebody that wanted to share this Christmas with her.
The movie quickly moves from the introduction to tension and action. Angela, was one of the last people to leave work, she promised her family that she would be at their place in 20 minutes or so . She got packed and was on her way to the underground garage. There was nothing unusual about it until a serious of events got her stuck in the building. It all looked like a series of unfortunate events until the security guard from the parking lot showed his true intentions. From that point the movie keeps your attention by an interesting dialogue and scenes. Direction and photography is nicely done followed by great acting. Wes Bently successfully embodied the character of the psychotic man and again proved he got skills just as he had shown in his first more memorable performances in the classic American Beauty. Rachel Nichols also put the great performance embodying strong and brave woman fighting for survival, and off course while doing that she was successfully using her physical attributes to let us know how brave she really is (even Liz noticed that :) ).
There are not too many characters in this movie and the only location is that parking garage. That sounds like the breath of fresh air, but unfortunately, that remained the only original thing. The play of cat and mice is "been there done that" kind of scenario which includes all possible events of saving your ass and we guarantee that you have already seen most of them at least once (The Hitcher, When a stranger Calls are just a few of the examples of that kind of movies). Not to be very harsh, this movie was undeniably entertaining and what more could you want from your average psycho, busty chick victim, evil dog and a garage? Well, maybe that's the main problem of the movie. The idea sounded interesting and the movie which could have been done in 30 or so minutes had been prolonged on purpose which consequently led to a drop in tension and too many absurd situations which didn't make any sense. So the problem with this movie is that though it has some good and thrilling moments, which you might enjoy (but only if you don't take it too seriously), is the missing dynamic. That means that the movie becomes diluted almost 40 minutes before the ending, and the absurd scenes start coming at you in waves. For example our psycho can teleport, read minds, fix remote cameras that had been destroyed a few minutes earlier etc. On top of that he is an Elvis Presley impersonator :). If it weren't for his tendencies to kill people we would be even willing to hang out with this guy :). In other words he is not scary, he is a clumsy guy that needs a girlfriend and has a wrong way of showing his needs.
If you, however, seek for a clever, twisted horror movie (which Haute Tension at least tried to be) with a dose of goreness (spoiled by the brilliantly done The Hills Have Eyes) skip this one because here you won't find any of these. To give it a neat finishing touch they could have at least revived Tom one more time at the ending.
Did I say Tom? Ups, Tom really hates when someone calls him by his name. I'll stop here and leave Tom alone. Sorry Tom :)
Our score:
Liz: 5.5/10
Kyle: 5/10
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