[Zero]

I liked this film a lot - but i also found the ending to be annoying. Not so much because it uses a cliched move to the schizophrenic - but because I felt cheated. This was not a film like Sixth Sense where everything actually fits together if you only know the ending - parts of High Tension just don't make sense - (e.g., the scene where Killer Man is abusing a decapitated head while Maria is driving with her friend).

I mentioned this to a friend who pointed out that at the very very beginning of the film - Maria is in the hospital and someone says "are we recording? " So, the whole story (and hte DVD extras confirm this) is maria recounting the events to the doctors and police (in an original cut of the film, the "reveal" didn't happen until the very end and then Maria is confronted with the videotape from the gas station).

Anyway, on another note, another friend mentioned to me that the whole lesbian-lust-kills-whole-family is part of french culture - there was a notorious murder in the 30s when two sisters (also incestuous lovers) killed their employers and then gave no reason for the killings - this became a point of obsession for the french psychoanalytic community at the time (and since).

hmmm