High Tension

[megoapesnut]

Talking about Dean Koontz in my author thread reminded me of something that has bothered me for some time. Has anyone read the Koontz book Intensity and watched the 2003 movie High Tension? The screenplay for the movie is an obvious plagiarism of Koontz's book, yet I never heard this mentioned anywhere. Never heard of any legal action by Koontz, not a peep. There is no way that I am the only person who realized this, yet nothing. I had read 10 or so reviews of the movie back when it was released and not one mentioned this. Very strange. Anyone see the movie?

[Brazoo]

I missed it, but

SPOILERS:

Is that the French movie with the twist ending - where one of the victims is actually the killer? Because that's been done in other places too.

[megoapesnut]

Yes, you have the correct movie. However, the twist ending is actually where it deviates from the book. Everything up to that twist ending is almost a direct script from the book. And I mean it is almost EXACTLY the same plot as the book, up until that ending. That ending actually came as a huge surprise to me as the movie was following the book so exactly, that I expected it to end the same way as well.

[Brazoo]

Ahhh - okay.

Well I haven't read the book or seen the movie - so my input is pretty useless.

But, I did find this thread on IMDB making the same connection you did - so you're not alone!

IMDb :: Boards :: High Tension (2003) :: Clearly a copy of Dean Koontz's 'INTENS...

[Brazoo]

Wow - googling reveals a lot more people discussing this. I found sources that claim that Alexandre Aja, the director/writer, read "Intensity", but says he didn't copy it. Sounds pretty dubious to me if so many people are talking about it.

[megoapesnut]

I found sources that claim that Alexandre Aja, the director/writer, read "Intensity", but says he didn't copy it.

Anyone who read the book knows this guy is an idiot if he is trying to claim he didn't copy it. There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY he could come up with that screenplay that so closely mirrors the book, on his own. And the twist ending that deviates so much from the book is an obvious ploy to try to claim that it isn't plagiarism.

[megoapesnut]

Ha! I read a few of those articles and couldn't agree more. One guy hit right on what I was thinking when the movie came out. I saw the previews and thought "Cool, movie version of the book". I waited throughout the trailer for them to say "based on the novel by Dean Koontz" and that never happened and watched the movie and was totally bewildered by the ending. I kept waiting to hear that Dean Koontz was filing a lawsuit or for Roger Ebert to review it and state the obvious, that is was a rip off of Intensity. None of these ever happened and I kept thinking "I can't be the only person to see this". It's good to see that I wasn't. Should have researched it sooner. Interestingly, I never saw the 97 miniseries Intensity as most of the people commenting had. I think I have a bootleg DVD of that somewhere and never found the time to watch it. I'll have to dig that up and give it a viewing. It's gotta be better than High Tension.