Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.
One of the classes I teach is English composition. I’ve found over the last dozen or so years that two of the places many students struggle is in writing good introductions and good conclusions, so I spend a great deal of time on them. What I tell them is that a great paper with a weak conclusion is remembered as a weak paper. The same is true with movies. A good, intelligent, and exciting movie that ends on a sour note is remembered more for the sour note than it is everything else. And thus we have High Tension (Haute Tension in the original French, and for some reason Switchblade Romance in the U.K.).
I’m not going to spoil the film by revealing the twist ending that creates plot holes that, as Roger Ebert said in his review, “[are] not only large enough to drive a truck through, but in fact [do] have a truck driven right through [them].” Chances are good that you’ve already seen High Tension and know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t seen High Tension, you’ve almost certainly heard other people complain about this very thing, and while you might not know the details of the ending that mar the film, you’re aware that they exist.
