Marie (Cécile de France) is the main protagonist and hidden plot-twist villainess of the 2003 French horror film High Tension (also known as Haute Tension in France and Switchblade Romance in the UK). She was a college student and the best friend of fellow student Alex. The film began with the girls going to Alex's parents' house in the country for the weekend to study together.
Their first night there took a dark turn, however, when a man appeared at the house in the middle of the night, with Marie witnessing the man attack Alex's father Daniel with a straight razor when he answered the door to him, later killing the family dog Hendrix before killing Daniel by shoving his head through the stair railing and decapitating him with a bookcase. Marie later witnessed the killer murdering Alex's mother by slitting her throat and her younger brother Tom by shooting him with a rifle as he fled into the nearby corn field, as well as finding Alex gagged and chained up in her room. After failing to call 911 due to the killer cutting the phone lines, Marie armed herself with a knife and got into the truck with Marie, getting locked in with her by the killer before he took off.
Marie was eventually able to get the door unlocked with her knife as the killer stopped at a gas station, sneaking into the store to get help and witnessing the killer murder the store clerk Jimmy with an axe. After the killer left before Marie could get back into the truck, Marie tried (to no avail) to get help from the police before arming herself with Jimmy's pistol and going in pursuit of the killer in Jimmy's car. Eventually, the killer saw Marie following him and ran her car off the road, chasing her into the forest where Marie strikes him with a barbed wire-wrapped fence post before suffocating him to death with a plastic sheet. But as Marie went to free Alex, police arrived at the gas station and reviewed the security footage after finding Jimmy's body, with the footage revealing the truth: Marie was the killer, as the video showed her killing Jimmy with the axe. This also led to the reveal that Marie had killed Alex's family and abducted her, all while invisioning an unknown intruder was the culprit.
After Marie freed Alex from her restraints, Alex held her psychotic friend back with the knife she gave her and blasted her for killing her family. The delusional Marie claimed she couldn't save Alex's family and tried to assure her that everything would be OK, only for Alex to slash Marie's face with the knife before stabbing her in the stomach. As Alex fled, the evil Marie (again imagining herself as the male intruder) chased after her with a concrete saw, using it to kill a passing driver Alex attempted to escape with. Marie then attempted to kill Alex with the saw, following her when she escaped through the broken windshield and began dragging herself down the road due to a piece of glass cutting her Achilles tendon.
As she taunted Alex with the saw, Marie referred to Alex as a "little slut" who could drive a woman crazy, fully revealing that Marie was in love with Alex. As Marie proclaimed that Alex didn't love her, Alex tearfully argued that she did, prompting the deranged villainess to smile and kiss Alex. Alex then took the opportunity and impaled Marie through the shoulder with a tire iron, with Marie repeatedly stating that she wouldn't let anyone come between them anymore; suggesting that Marie's reason for killing Alex's family was the belief that they were a threat to her relationship with Alex. Marie survived her injuries and was shown having been placed in a mental institution, where Alex was shown visiting her in the film's ending. While the mirror into Marie's room was one-way, the film ended with Marie (who was handcuffed to her bed) smiling at the mirror and reaching out to the mirror, somehow sensing that Alex was on the other side.
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