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The High Tension Twist DOES Make Sense · Midnight Movie Theatre

• 0:19
  Speaker 1: This movie has been credited with kicking off the French
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: extremity wave of the early They used so much blood
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: in one scene that the cameras were still leaking out
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: fake blood on the next movie that they were used for.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I did a whole other video about this movie, comparing
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: the Dean Koon's book Intensity, but for now we're going
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: to focus on the controversial twist that this movie takes
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: at the end. So if you want to watch it
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: before we get into that, go ahead and fire up
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: to me and get it popping. Although I'm not sure
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: if they have the unrated version, just in case you're
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: wanting to get the full effect of how brutal this
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: movie really is. So in the movie High Tension, these
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: two friends, Alex and Marie. They go to stay at
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Alex's house her parents' house in the country to study
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: for their final exams. To keep it short, a killer
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: shows up, murders Alex's whole family, kidnaps Alex, and then
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Marie pursues that killer to try to rescue her. So
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: this whole time you're falling around this guy who has
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Alex tied up in the back of this giant van.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: This fucking jeepers, creepers van and he's going around just
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: terrorizing everybody, killing gas station people, fucking crashing Marie's car
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: off the road and shit like that. And they have
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: this big battle where they're really just going at each other,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: and you know, eventually Marie kills him and rescues Alex,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: and when she does, you know, she takes her gag off,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: she uncuffs her and all this stuff and hands her
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: the knife. As soon as Alex is free, she turns
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: the knife on Marie and she's like, get the fuck
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: away from me, crazy bitch, and you're just kind of like, wait,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: what's going on here? And then she stabs Marie and
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: we find out that Marie has been the killer this
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: whole time. There is no mister potato head guy in
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: a big truck that's fucking severed heads. He doesn't exist.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: It's actually Marie. But then after that, Alex takes off running,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Marie goes back after her, and then you kind of
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: see Marie switch back and forth between herself pursuing Alex
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: and the killer pursuing Alex. They also like really hammer
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: this home by showing the police at the gas station
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: going over the surveillance footage, and in the surveillance footage
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: you see Marie with the acts killing the gas station attendant.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: So there's no way out of it. It just it
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: is what it is. She is the killer. And this
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: pissed a lot of people off. For a lot of people,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: this ruined the movie. It was met with mixed reviews
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: when it was released. Roger Ebert gave it a one
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: star and noted the truck sized plot hole in the movie,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: which he's referring to the actual truck that the guy
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: is driving around in. And I get what he's saying here.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: You know, where'd the truck come from? Where'd the truck go?
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Where'd the truck come from? Cotton Eye Joe. It's a
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: tale as old as time. And I'm just going to
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: go out on a limb and say that there was
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: never a truck. And I don't know why that's so
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: hard to understand. That should be a pretty easy concept.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: This movie uses the unreliable narrator trick to set this
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: reveal up. I would say it's the majority opinion that
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: this twist ruins the movie, But when people explain why
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: it ruins the movie, they usually explain it as if
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: everything we've just watched is completely literal. This can be
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: really confusing and kind of frustrating, of course, but I
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: feel like with a rewatch, it all makes sense. Some
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: popular examples of this technique are Fight Club, The Usual Suspects, Memento,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: American Psycho, and Gone Girl. If Marie has been going
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: through whatever sort of psychosis fantasy hallucination scenario that makes
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: her think that all of these things are happening and
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: she's actually acting as the hero in her mind that's
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: rescuing Alex, then she probably did all of these things
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: that we saw the guy do. She killed the family,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: tied up Alex, and took her in a car and
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: not the truck. She went to the gas station. Jimmy,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: the gas station attendant, either notices that there's a chained
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: up lady in her car, or maybe Alex did escape
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: temporarily and ran into the gas station and was able
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: to signal to Jimmy that there's a problem here, and
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: then Marie ends up killing him with the axe, and
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: then as they're driving, Alex does something to cause Marie
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: to drive off the road and crash, giving her all
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: the wounds. Because she's all bloody and shit at this
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: point from the big battle that we saw or have
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: with the imaginary man, you know, that could have come
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: from a car crash easily. And then when she comes
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: to she's no longer in fantasy land anymore, so she
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: releases Alex and that's where we get the end of
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: the movie. All of the other weird things with the
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: k like him fucking the head and putting the picture
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: of all the women up in his truck probably just
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: represent Marie's sexual repression. She is a gay character that
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: has feelings for her friend but never tells her. And
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: I think that's kind of doubled down on because before
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: all of the killing starts, Marie is watching Alex shower
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: from outside her window, and literally the next scene is
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: like the guy's truck pulling up and he just fucking
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: kills the dad, kills the mom, kills the little brother,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: and then kidnaps Alex. And it's like it almost feels
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: like that scene is there to represent this trigger or
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: you know, this mental break that Marie has. That's all
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: on this topic for now. Let me know what you
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: think about the unreliable narrator tactic in the comments. Does
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: it work for you in this movie or in any movie.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: The next high tension video I do is definitely going
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: to be comparing the made for TV movie Intensity and
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: high Tension. I don't know when that's going to happen,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: but it's on my list. It's guaranteed. Thanks for listening,
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: good night,