Hostel Movie Review (Hollywood excrimate alert)

Boston.com ^ | 1/06/05 | Wesley Morris

[teddyballgame]

Folks who live for the pull and snap of live flesh will have their share of sequences to cheer for in "Hostel," the new horror flick about two American backpackers who wind up snared in a wild Slovakian torture ring.

Written and directed by Eli Roth ("Cabin Fever"), the movie tells one of those nightmare-abroad tales, like "An American Werewolf in London" or "Eurotrip." Jocky and horny Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and bookish and virginal Josh (Derek Richardson) show up in Amsterdam and promptly hit the bong and cruise the nightclubs. They befriend an Icelander named Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson), insult the locals, get in fights, find hookers, and carry on with boorish joie de vivre.

[MattinNJ]

There is a movement in Asian films for this sort of graphic visceral horror. It's making its way into American films.

The Japanese director Miike, who directed "Audition" (fatal attraction on steroids) has a cameo in Hostel. As sick and twisted as Miike is, he said Hostel was too much even for him. If you've ever seen a Miike film, that's saying a lot.

I hate horror movies but my wife loves them. I can't figure that one out yet.

[TheBigB]

I fainted while watching "Herbie, Fully Loaded" ;)

Me too, but only when they showed Lindsay Lohan walking in slow motion.

*growl*

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Correction----my son. There was something about that movie.....

[Borges]

'Audition' made me physically ill.

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I liked Kill Bill 1&2.

[lesser_satan]

I agree. I thought Kill Bill was a campy, somewhat cheesey (but fun nonetheless) tribute to anime and some of the ultra-violent Hong-Kong fare.

[SJSAMPLE]

Somehow, my wife didn't find it funny when I spray painted "Pu$$y Wagon" on the back of her SUV.

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lololol

I'd say you were lucky to still be drawing breath. :-)

[Mr. Blonde]

Although I have heard from some that The Passion eventually becomes over the top with its violence, Kill Bill starts over the top. The two movies are not comparable. KB doesn't strive for anything outside of entertainment and homage. The Passion has slightly loftier goals.

As for Hostel, I saw it tonight. Not that scary and not really that gross. It had its moments, but nothing that hasn't been shown before.

[MattinNJ]

Me too. I had to leave the room.

[Aquinasfan]

This movie's only significance, especially in its popularity, is in its serving as a milestone on our culture's descent.

Hostel

Eli Roth's Hostel is being described by some critics as "horror porn." That means it is exists to encourage and excite our baser appetites by serving up killings, mutilations, and torture—not to mention explicit scenes of sexual misbehavior—for our "entertainment." It's all designed to shock and to horrify audiences.

Guess what? Hostel is also the No. 1 film in America, tops at the box office. That means we're bound to see a lot more of this kind of thing over the next few years, in which other movies try to outdo Hostel—and the two Saw movies—with increasingly intense and explicit violence.

Hostel is about three hedonistic fools who indulge in all manner of unethical pleasures until they find themselves trapped in a game where others fulfill their own appetites for cruelty by torturing human beings and killing them in slow and grisly ways—decapitations, throats slit, heads smashed in, digits being cut off and body parts diced and tossed into a furnace, point-blank shootings, eyes being pulled from sockets, flesh drilled full of holes, a person throwing herself in front of a train, and more. It seems designed to delight people who share the unhealthy appetites of the movie's villains.

Nathan Lee of The New York Times says Roth's immature revelry isn't even good at scaring people. "Inspired by the brutal exploitation pictures of the 1970's and the nasty new breed of Asian horror films, Hostel is motivated by an adolescent urge to shock. And while it's true that no civilized person will remain unscathed by the film's relentless bigotry—this is one of the most misogynistic films ever made—Mr. Roth's gory spectacles are too calculated to deliver the transgressive jolts they so obviously seek."

We could only find one Christian film critic who bothered to suffer through the film (Christianity Today Movies opted to skip it). Marcus Yoars (Plugged In) says, "Days after seeing the film, I'm still wondering how it didn't get slapped with an NC-17 rating, because it pretends to be a porn flick for the first 45 minutes."

Yoars mentions how the filmmaker got the idea for the movie, and then sums up the film. "Roth was captivated with the warped notion that individuals could be so numb to the 'ordinary' vices of sex and drugs that they'd resort to inflicting extreme torture upon someone else as their next high. The result of his twisted fascination is grotesquely misshapen and transparently gratuitous."

Just as disturbing as the film's box office success is the fact that many mainstream critics are applauding it.

[Aquinasfan]

Frankly, I don't think the ads on TV for it are very good, and really do show too much. I have a 4 year old, and when she looks at me and asks if that's a puddle of blood that man slipped in - it's gotten to be too much. I want to saw I saw this on either Disney, or Nick, or ABC Family, something like that - it's about the only channels we watch together as a family.

I had a similar experience. I was able to avert the kids' attention just in time. Next time, the TV station is going to get a call from a very angry parent.