/rating_on.png "1 Cleaver")
/rating_off.png "5 Cleavers")
(2 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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Movies
Piranha 3-D (2010)
The Esseker File (2009)
Mirrors (2008)
The Hills Have Eyes (2006)
High Tension (2003)
Furia (1999)
Over the Rainbow (1997)
Alexandre Aja (born 7 August 1978) is a French film director who rose to international stardom for his 2003 horror film Haute Tension (known as High Tension in the US, and known as Switchblade Romance in the UK).
Aja was born in Paris, France. His real name is Alexandre Jouan-Arcady and his pseudonymous surname is formed of the 3 first letters of his full name. He is the son of French pied-noir director Alexandre Arcady and French cinema critic Marie-Jo Jouan. Aja is Jewish and his wife is Moroccan filmmaker Laïla Marrakchi.
He made his directorial debut at the age of eighteen with the short film Over The Rainbow, which received a Cannes Film Festival Golden Palm Award nomination for best short film. In 1999 he directed Furia, a movie based on Julio Cortázar’s short story Graffiti. From Furia and his next features, he frequently works with Grégory Levasseur as writers. Such as in The Hills Have Eyes, Mirrors, P2, and Piranha 3-D. Levasseur also made his works as production designer too.
Haute Tension, released in 2003 in France and in 2005 in USA, placed Aja on the map for the horror movie genre. The French slasher, though sticking to horror convention, pushed the gore and tension envelope. Favouring make-up effects over computer-generated imagery, the film quickly found respect among horror fans. It was released in the U.S. as High Tension after some editing. The film was nominated for grand prize at the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival and earned Aja awards for best direction and best fantasy film at the Catalonian International Film Festival.
American director Wes Craven asked Aja to come up with a concept for the remake of his 1977 film The Hills Have Eyes after seeing High Tension. Craven subsequently asked Aja to direct the movie, which was released with an R rating in the U.S. after an extensive amount of editing.
His latest project is a horror film entitled Mirrors, about a mysterious mirror that brings out the worst aspects of people whenever they look at themselves in it. The film is a remake of the K-Horror film Into the Mirror. Aja directed Piranha 3-D, a horror movie about prehistoric piranhas in Arizona. It is a remake of the film Piranha.
Because Alexandre Aja is working on Mirrors, he did not direct the sequel to The Hills Have Eyes 2, which was released on 10 March 2007.
In 2004, Aja was named to the Variety – Ten Directors To Watch list. He is a member of the so-called Splat Pack, a term coined by film historian Alan Jones in “Total Film” magazine for a new wave of directors making brutally violent horror films. The other Splat Pack members are Darren Lynn Bousman, Neil Marshall, Greg Mclean, Eli Roth, James Wan, Leigh Whannell, and Rob Zombie.
Personal Quotes
“That’s the problem. It’s hard to release an NC-17 anywhere right now. It’s like you don’t have access to theaters to many multiplexes. And I understand that cuts had to be made to the movie.”
“I’m a huge fan of movies and I watch DVDs all day and I like to be able to watch DVDs that are different from what was in theaters. Whether that’s uncut or a director’s cut. I think it’s an awesome way to rediscover the movie.”
“It’s a very interesting point because in Europe there is no horror movie. It’s very hard to make a slasher or gory movie. There is no audience for that. I think the main difference between Europe and the US is that there is a kind of freedom. We don’t have this Puritanism problem. We don’t have this stupid, silly problem with nudity. On the other hand we have this problem with violence. It’s very hard to get very far. A movie like The Last House On The Left would be very hard to do in Europe. Like High Tension was. It was not very easy to do and find money to make the movie because it was so violent. We don’t have a nudity problem, the only problem we have is too much violence. To give you an example, The Devil’s Rejects, which I saw before I was leaving for LA. It’s a great movie, it’s an amazing movie but it’d be very hard to do in Europe. Because it’s very violent and traumatic but sometimes you are on the side of the killers and that’d be something they’d have a problem with.”
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