MovieChat Forums > Alexandre Aja Discussion > What happened to him?

What happened to him?


At one point, he was one of my favorite horror directors. High Tension and The Hills Have Eyes remake were fantastic horror films. But what happened? What went wrong? He ended up directing that Piranha film and Horns...which neither of those films were memorable. I really wish he would start making great horror films again. As a director, he had so much potential. It's such a shame that his career didn't take off. He was actually considered to direct the 2007 Halloween remake...which could've been awesome.

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High Tension and THHE remake were a nice one-two punch. Everything after: Pure mediocrity.

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I know. I wonder what happened.

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He dropped off for a while. After making Crawl (2019) he now has another horror project lined up called Mother Land... starring Halle Berry of all people.

The synopsis;

A family that has been haunted by an evil spirit for years. Their safety and their surroundings come into question when one of the children questions if the evil is real.



He's interesting as a director. I first saw The Hills Have Eyes and High Tension from him, both are good and definitely his best efforts. Piranha was decent enough.

However I've always been aware of High Tension being a rip-off of Dean Koontz Intensity, I've never read the book but I did watch the made-for-TV movie from 1997 just the other week and yeah, High Tension is an egregious breach of copyright. It could have gotten sued, thankfully for them Dean Koontz didn't pursue it.

That does sour the film for me a little. It's basically the first part of Intensity with a bunch of gore and a divisive plot twist.


When you factor that along with The Hills Have Eyes and Piranha being remakes it makes me think he doesn't really have many original ideas. Crawl was decent but is a typical creature feature.

In saying this I haven't seen Mirrors or Horns, though from looking Mirrors was originally meant to be a remake of a South Korean horror film called Into the Mirror, go figure! Whilst Horns is based off a novel by Stephen King's son.


So the four films I've seen of him are basically 3 remakes (High Tension may as well be one) and a generic creature feature. Then two of his other films are a remake and an adaptation.

It's very lackluster to be honest. 4 remakes, 1 adaptation and 1 generic creature feature? He can direct decently but he seems totally bereft of creative thoughts.

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