High Tension - A great movie. A bit of a rip off?

High Tension was an AWESOME movie.

However, when I was watching the beginning I was struck how similar the first part was to Dean Koontz's book "Intensity".

Here are all the things that are the EXACTLY the same in the beginning of the movie and in the book.

-Two college friends, both female, are driving to one of their homes. One of them complains about the driving of the other.

-They meet the family.

-Later on during the night a large killer comes to the house and kills the family but not the female guest.

-The female somehow hitches a ride with the killer they go to a truck stop.

-The killer kills the truck stop employee (There were two in the book).

-The female sneaks into the stop and takes a gun. She then goes after the killer.

-The killer later approaches the females and the gun is useless because he has taken the bullets out.

Of course there are some major differences. In the movie the other female is not killed but kidnapped. In the book the killer already has another girl trapped in his house.

I mean I dunno. I suppose it's easy enough to come up with a movie script if the setup has already has been done before. The movie makes up for it by including a HUGE PLOT TWIST that I did not see coming. The twist really makes the movie and raises it above the normal horror movie genre. Kudos to the Producer for changing the ending and letting the movie run 20 minutes after the twist is reviled.

Makeup and special effects were great.

Acting was superb.

It's a really great DVD and I recommend watching it with the original French audio.