Has anyone seen Switchblade Romance aka Haute Tension?

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NO SPOILER:

After a good hour of tightly done suspense, some horribly vicious scenes and a sense of claustrophobia...

It goes tits up. The last half hour has to be the most offensive, pisspoor, disappointing, illogical, simply dire heap of shit to any film ever. So much so that I wanted to smash the DVD into little pieces and scream at anyone who told me this was some kind of minor masterpiece.

Awful.

― Film_Frank, Friday, 27 May 2005 00:44 (twenty-one years ago)

Best horror film of the decade (so far) until the ending. The twist completely invalidates the entire thing. It's funny, bc I've always heard the dictum that the ending to a film has the power to save or destroy the whole thing - yet I rarely consider movies to be so horribly scarred or redeemed by one. But the contrast in this case - such a strong opening 75-80 minutes, completely obliterated by the last five to ten...I have no doubts about the dictum now.

― Girolamo Savonarola, Friday, 27 May 2005 04:25 (twenty-one years ago)

I think the worst thing is that the twist is utterly predictable, I had worked it out after about half an hour.

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Friday, 27 May 2005 07:50 (twenty-one years ago)

BS - you cannot work the twist out because IT MAKES NO SENSE. She follows the killer in her car - catches up with him and has a big fight with the guy?!!! How the fuck does she followe HERSELF in her own car, or hide from herself in the back of a van etc?

It is actually an hour in when the film goes tits up. An utterly shoddy, awful, dreadful and infuriatingly bad film - made all the worse because it could have been so much better.

― Film_Frank, Friday, 27 May 2005 11:22 (twenty-one years ago)

OK, rather than "worked it out" read "predicted it". Christ Calz, you'd think nobody had ever seen Fight Club or The Machinist - people have conversations with the other parts of their personality all the time in films. But as soon as I noticed she wasn't actually in any of the scenes with the killer (in that you never see them in the same shot) it becomes obvious that it's at least a possibility (particularly since all the advance notices said it was more than just a normal stalk'n'slash).

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Friday, 27 May 2005 12:07 (twenty-one years ago)

The Machinist was bollox. Fight Club was OK.

This was the worst of all of them. But how can someone drive a car - without the victim in it (She's in the van up ahead, remember? The SAME VAN THAT IS TRYING TO KNOCK CECILE DE FRANCE FROM THE ROAD NO LESS) and then catch up with the 'real killer' - after the aforementioned bout of car vs car road rage??

And she IS in the same scene with the killer - when the mother is killed they are both in the same room. Just awful.

As for "best horror film of the decade so far"... WTF?

Better than:

May
Wrong Turn
Audition
The Eye
The Eye 2
Old Boy (yes, which transcends genres before you point it out so...)
Saw
Open Water
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Ginger Snaps
My Little Eye

Etc etc

― Film_Frank, Friday, 27 May 2005 12:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Playing devil's advocate, does anybody else apart from the viewer see the other car? I can't remember. If not, then it's explained as part of her delusion. Complete bollocks, obviously.

In the same room, but not both on the screen at the same time, I don't think.

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Friday, 27 May 2005 12:35 (twenty-one years ago)

Aldo - I watched this hunk of crap two nights ago so it's still fresh in my mind and, yes, she sees the other car and we see the other car. It's bollocks because this new trend seems to be to pull an illogical "THEY WERE TWO PEOPLE" curveball out of nowhere even when it makes no sense at all. Like how can we explain the decapitation/ blow job at the start of the film? Where did that come from?

God, I hated this film so much. I was pleased as punch when I traded it for an uncut disc of Ichi the Killer yesterday.

― Film_Frank, Friday, 27 May 2005 12:51 (twenty-one years ago)

Fair enough, I saw it about 6 months ago after my mate got it from Korea and only watched it the once. The twist, shit though it is, seemed consistent with what I thought I had watched. Remember, her and us seeing the car don't count, it's only other people that do.

Is that the "Dutch" version of Ichi The Killer?

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Friday, 27 May 2005 13:00 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, Dutch version. Only have a nth gen. VHS of it and thought it was a pretty decent little splatter flick.

I just hated Switchblade Romance with a passion.

― Film_Frank, Friday, 27 May 2005 13:50 (twenty-one years ago)

You can't even compare the film to Fight Club re: inconsistency - he's never doing anything somewhere else while Tyler is; the car crash even shows that he was driving (if you watch the continuity carefully enough); and there are tons of flashback shots that show the "objective" reality of scenes we had already watched. Nothing seems massively physically impossible.

This film, however, is just pants.

― Girolamo Savonarola, Saturday, 28 May 2005 11:44 (twenty-one years ago)

Frank, I'll give you a concessionary pass on "Audition". Think most of the rest is crap, though. Hideo Nakata does nothing for me.

― Girolamo Savonarola, Saturday, 28 May 2005 11:48 (twenty-one years ago)

four years pass...

Sigh @ this film. My hopes were so high but I realized what was happening as soon as the police arrived at the gas station. I started thinking about how this could possibly end and then quickly deduced how the film could still have some sort of shocker or twist. I'm just pissed off at how horribly it fits in with the rest of the film.

― gabourey voltaire (Stevie D), Sunday, 21 March 2010 07:49 (sixteen years ago)

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