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Her lustful gaze is ominous and she swings back and forth, into and out of the light coming from the house--portending what is eventually revealed to be her dual nature.

Marie’s homosexuality lurks in the shadows awaiting release. At one point she evades the killer by literally hiding in a closet. Her desires are so repressed that when they are finally unleashed, they take the form of a predatory hypermasculinity. The murderous intruder doesn’t speak; he only grunts. He is heavyset and dirty, purposeful and merciless. His sole motivation is a twisted desire for Alex. The last thing to happen before he arrives is Marie lying in bed masturbating, ostensibly thinking about Alex showering.

It is this act that unleashes her pathological desire.

The first instance of masturbation in the movie is far more sinister. It is the first time we see the killer, before he even shows up on the farmhouse doorstep. He sits in his truck, one hand resting on a woman’s head bobbing in his lap as he grunts to climax. He then takes the head, which we now see isn’t attached to a body, and chucks it out the window before driving off, the camera lingering behind to zoom in on the disembodied woman’s gruesome features.

Once it’s revealed that he is Marie’s alter ego, this scene reflects the idea that she is pursuing a sick fantasy, one that is so all-encompassing, it would have her take Alex’s life if that’s what were necessary to possess her fully.

High Tension goes far beyond modern send-ups of the horror genre, such as Scream, that have a comedic bent. It also surpasses the fear factor of classics like Friday the 13th and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre because it relies less on startling and more on chilling to the bone. The violence isn’t schlocky and it’s nothing we’ve seen so many times and so poorly done that we might be desensitized to it.

For instance, Alex’s father is decapitated when his head is stuck between the banister railings and the killer comes at it sideways, at full tilt, with a heavy dresser. The movie’s brutality is gory and graphic and, above all, horribly realistic.

High Tension is no better than the rest in fetishizing female terror, but this horror flick locates the source for that terror in a woman, and significantly, a closeted dyke. It pathologizes homosexuality and suggests that unexpressed lesbian desire can become murderous.

Marie can’t have Alex so she has to kill her.

If anecdotal evidence from the evening news is any guide, men would appear to be more prone than women to the if-they-don’t-reciprocate-retaliate psychopathy. But Marie has to off everyone in sight, including the hapless family St. Bernard, in order to have Alex to herself. And the movie opens and closes with Marie neurotically repeating “I won’t let anyone come between us again” in a harrowing whisper. At the movie’s end we learn that she’s doing so from her room in a mental institution, where her deranged crimes have undoubtedly landed her.

Marie’s repressed lesbian desire is integral to the plot’s twist. Her femaleness is the reason why she can’t simply express her desire the way a male character would if he were in love with his female best friend. It’s the lesbian component that gives the ending it’s dubious oomph.

High Tension’s official website refers to the movie as “a white-knuckle journey into the heart of fear,” but it’s more like a knuckle-headed journey into the heart of homophobia.

Visit the official High Tension site

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