Fantastic Fest 2010: HIGH LANE (VERTIGE) Review

A group of pretty young things foolishly insist on following a climbing route closed down for repair and you know things are not going to end well. Throw in a simmering love triangle, a cockily over-confident self appointed leader, a serious case of vertigo and the fact that a crazed killer dwells atop the mountain they are climbing and, well, I told you so. Things are not going to end well at all. Vertige - previously known as Ferrata or High Lane in English - director Abel Ferry has been marked as a man to watch for a few years now, ever since his shorts films began to make waves in international genre circles and with his first feature film now under his belt Ferry has served up a potent reminder that you don't necessarily need to rewrite the rules to create an effective horror-thriller, all you need to do is build a compelling story with solid characters and then execute (if you'll pardon the pun) well. Twenty-something Fred and Karine are accomplished climbers, adrenaline junkies perfectly at home clinging to the sheer face of a rocky cliff, and before they part ways with their friends Loic and Chloe as they all move into new school and work options, they are taking their city-bound friends into the wild for what should be a challenging but easily manageable climb. Complicating things rather a lot, however, is the inclusion of Guillaume in their party, Chloe's ex-boyfriend who essentially invited himself along to the great displeasure of the smaller, weaker and generally much less physically impressive Loic. Things are complicated even further when the group arrives at the base of the trail - well marked and laid out with security cables, pitons and metal rods embedded into the cliff face as climbing aids - only to discover that it has been closed due to safety and repair issues. No worries, says Fred, we can manage it anyway - a position that the continual game of one-upmanship between Guillaume and Loic leads the group to accept. It turns out of course that the closure was well deserved and it isn't long before cables are popping from their moorings and the group is clinging, terrified, to the cliff face with no possible choice but to go forward and hope to find a safe path of return. What they find instead are bear trips, hidden pits filled with spikes and an unseen attacker launching cross bow bolts from the cover of the tree line. The great strength of Ferry's Vertige isn't necessarily that it surprises but that, with the exception of one unnecessary plotline, Ferry serves up a collection of realistic characters in a stunning natural environment with lean, brisk efficiency. This is a film that knows what it is, that knows what it's audience wants to see, and delivers precisely that with a minimum of fuss and bother. It is the first film that I've seen in ages that feels no need to humanize or sympathize with its villain, the gore sequences vicious and effective, the transitions from adventure to survival thriller to full on horror smooth and seamless. Ferry has a sure hand behind the camera, the dynamics between the characters ringing true and giving the proceedings some nice depth and added tension. While Ferry is not going to win the sort of attention as did his countrymen behind films like Martyrs, A L'Interieur or Sheitan - films that set out to rewrite the rules of Gallic genre film - he certainly deserves a lot of attention and praise for simply recognizing that there's still some life in the old bones, too, and then backing up that realization with the skills to craft a more than solid, by the book old school horror-thriller. Vertige marks the arrival of a significant, openly commercially minded player on the international horror market.