Posted on 01/03/2006 5:00:01 PM PST by Callahan
rating: 3 out of 4
Director: Eli Roth Cast: Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, Eythor Gudjonsson, Barbara Nedeljakova Screenplay: Eli Roth MPAA Classification: R (gore enough to make you gag on that morning's breakfast)
I can't attest to honestly enjoying Hostel. In fact, I often had to resist the reflexive temptation to leave. The film is simply disgusting. I worried that my fellow audience members would be drenched in a fresh, steaming coat of my own vomit, to be absolutely truthful. Someone asked Writer/Director Eli Roth after the screening how he managed to convince the MPAA into an R-rating. Roth laughed at this, mentioning off-handedly that Rob Zombie was to thank. After Zombie returned an astonishing nine times to earn his R-rating for The Devil's Rejects, Roth believed the MPAA just didn't care enough to fight a new director. He even wrote Zombie a thank-you note.
The film surrounds three young men, Josh (Derek Richardson), Paxton (Jay Hernandez), and Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson), and their horrific backpacking trip through Europe. We meet them as they enter Amsterdam, eager to exploit the nation's liberal laws concerning marijuana. But when the night is through, the trio arrive back at their hostel past curfew, only to find themselves locked out. Luckily, Amsterdam native Alex (Lubomir Bukovy) comes to their rescue, offering them a spot at his pad for the night. Alex informs the boys that Slovakia is the untapped gem of Europe for backpackers; that beautiful women simply await strapping young Americans like themselves to steal them away. And, of course, our heroes buy the lie and the next day trek out towards Slovakia.
Once they arrive, they find there are already reservations in Oli's name at a luxury hostel. And when they walk into their room, the boys find Natalya and Svetlana (Barbara Nedeljakova and Jana Kaderabkova) casually nude, sveltely inviting them to the spa. By the end of the evening the group gets itself into bed together, but wakes up the next morning to find Oli missing. No matter, they think, it's just crazy Oli. But things get even stranger when Josh wakes up in a dungeon, only to be drilled through the kneecaps and sliced with a scalpel through his achilles tendons by a businessman-turned-surgeon (Jan Vlasak). What, you might ask, is this dungeon? Well, it's a lucrative business that allows insatiable, adrenaline-addicted citizens of the world's upper tier to pay $5-50,000 to chain an innocent human to a chair and torture them how he/she pleases. Roth read of such a business (explaining the "inspired by true events" curtail) on a website, later explaining the idea to Tarantino, who encouraged him to put the twisted idea to paper. Whether or not the web site speaks truth is immaterial, explains Roth. It's just the fact that somebody thought of it. Anyway, Josh meets his destiny quite quickly (in a nod to Psycho's elimination of the protagonist twist) and puts the aggressive, dodgy Paxton front and center. Paxton starts digging deeper and deeper, questioning the conniving girls as to Josh's whereabouts, and soon he finds himself in a similar situation.
Chophouse films like these, particularly those most prominent of the genre from the seventies, have always been hindered by technology. Make-up just hasn't been good enough to make the gore convincing. But Hostel clearly leaps this hurdle. The film is fun and over-the-top, but holds enough solemnity to tug the audience straight into its torture scenes. The film is so gory that when we watch as two fingers are vengefully dismembered with a scalpel in the final scene, the gore seems tamely benign. Roth fondly recalls the most squeamish of scenes as "the eyegasm scene." All I'll divulge is that the scene has to do with a blowtorch and only one half of a woman's face. I'm confident with my movie-watching habits to proudly brag at an adept tolerance, and even affection, of quality gore. I'm not one to turn away from blood and flailing limbs. But what Roth does to us in Hostel could cause even a mortician to cringe. In short, it's the goriest film I've ever seen.
Many wonder what the "Quentin Tarantino Presents" headline stapled to Hostel denotes. First of all, it doesn't mean Hostel is Tarantino's creation. As Roth explains, Tarantino is a large advocate of the budding filmmaker. He occasionally has "movie nights" in which a gaggle of blossoming directors are invited to Tarantino's pad to check out some films. There, Tarantino riles up the directors and gets them psyched for their upcoming projects. After seeing Roth's first feature, Cabin Fever, Tarantino invited Roth to one such shindig and offered to help out with Hostel. Roth pumped out a first draft script, Tarantino helped with the edits, and agreed to offer the "Quentin Tarantino Presents" headline. From there, Roth took the reigns during the shooting process, and Tarantino returned to help out with post-production and MPAA rating strategies. Technically, Tarantino played Producer of Hostel, but in more ways than one, he was the film's mentor.
As aforementioned, I can't admit to having enjoyed Hostel. I certainly wouldn't watch it again. But for those diehard fans of the chophouse slasher genre, Hostel's the American masterpiece. Takashi Miike films have certainly lived up to Hostel's gory watermark, but Hostel is the first American film, to my knowledge, to grace such bloody explicitness. Roth even admits to have been deeply influenced by Miike's work, particularly Audition, and Miike actually makes a cameo as one of the business' clients. But despite my physical aversion to Roth's film, I'll admit that it's a grim refreshment among the lamely malignant, tired duds that have passed for the Horror genre so far this year.
There is something very wrong with our society.
Just the ads on TV have made me ill. Apparently there are graphic scenes of mutilation and dismemberment. And then we wonder why so many in society are desensitized to crime.
Total disgusting crap. I pray the POS flops big time.
And yet they wonder whybox office grosses are down......
As an aside, I think Tarantino is one sick puppy.
Roth has stated that this film is a commentary on the direction the porn business is ultimately headed. Maybe it's a commentary on the direction he's ultimately headed.
My wife's dad was hardly father of the year in that category. He took her to see to Scarface when she was maybe five. I'm amazed she turned out as well as she did.
Cabin Fever certainly sucked.
However, I do love Rob Zombie. I didn't find Devils Rejects all that gory.
Especially when American special interest groups go berserk over non-violent "art-house" erotic films, then seem to look the other way when movie after movie like this gets an "R" rating. I don't think it's too hard to figure out which type of film has done more damage to American culture over the last thirty years.
This movie looks sick. Calling it a "horror" movie is a misnomer. This is a disgusting snuff film. I can't seem to find a review on any website from anyone who will call it what it is. It seems the reviewers all thinks it's gory fun. So this is what hollywood has come down to? No imagination just plain disgusting torture and gore; lets see how much the audience can watch before they get sick. Funny how the libs will probably love the story line..from what i gather rich Europeans pay to torture unsuspecting Americans. Hollywood leftists probably would lineup for a chance at a place like this. Anyways this is just another hollyweird TRASH movie that rips off movies like saw and regurgitates (pun intended) the "plot". Critics and sick people will love it, but it will hopefully flop at the box-office as I don't think your average peson will find it fun to go see a toture film on friday night. Looks like 2006 will be another bad year for Hollywood freaks if they keep putting out garbage like this.
Tarantino's gone downhill pretty quickly, in his short career.
I didn't understand why it took so long for Kill Bill came out. But when I saw part 1 in theatre's, I was glad it was split in two parts. I would have left sooner if the movie was the whole 3 hr duration that the two parts added up to.
Add that with his contribution for the nihilistic Sin City, and I have to wonder what happened to him after he made Jackie Brown? No heart to these latter movies at all.
If somebody made a movie about the graphic torture of Golden Retriever puppies, people (and not just PETA freaks) would burn down any theater that showed it. Power-drilling Human Beings just doesn't rate much outrage I guess.
i watched the preview and a few clips, unbelievable. Good god this is a nasty movie. I know it's not real, but is somehow trying to show torture as entertainment.
FU Tarantino and Roth for making this vile piece of crap. There are enough Al Qaeda snuff films out there to mitigate the need to produce this garbage.
This is far worse than pornography, at least with porno, love and sex can be inferred. This garbage is just pure evil and hate.
What I've learned is when someone like Tarantino gets sick or injured, they are the biggest babies on the planet.
Fantasy is one thing.
Another to actually live it.
Hostel currently has a 91% positive rating at RottenTomatoes.com. 20 of 22 critics liked it.
Lotta sick folks out there.
If Roth made the college kids Middle Eastern and turned the "Hostel" into a front for a CIA torture camp, they'd probably give him an Oscar.
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