79 - High Tension

    A pair of girls go to visit one of their families on a country farm.  As they settle in for bed, a deranged trucker comes to the door, and slaughters most of the family, and kidnaps one of the girls.
    I think I’m up to about three viewings of this so far.  I like it, but my feelings about it have evolved a little.  I don’t mind the slow setup as much.  I still have some issues with conflating sexuality and violence.  It’s a cheap way of drawing a parallel that I have a hard time making sense of.
    Regardless, now I feel like there’s a gradual slip that happens during the movie, moving it from feeling like realistic tension, to being campy tension, and finally ending on ridiculous tension.  This doesn’t make it less enjoyable, but it depends on your preferences.
    Around the time that she leaves the gas station, the movie slips from the fairly real tension that has brought the story to that point, and moves into a campy tension.  She takes control, and she’s making an effort not just to save her friend, but to destroy the villain.  It’s a decent development.  Once the big reveal happens, the tension actually dissipates, and it turns into a straightforward slasher.  I don’t feel like there’s much tension, but it remains entertaining as it heads for a big finish.
    But that’s the problem.  The ending seems too easy to laugh at, and hard to take seriously.  This undermines the tension that was built over the rest of the movie.
    There are lots of complaints about the ending.  I honestly don’t care about it.  It does create a lot of issues that would require resolution, but I just don’t feel like it matters.
    I’d love to see this in a theater.  I think that would sell the tension much more.