Hostel

Hostel: A unique, Once-In-A-Decade Thrill Ride

Eli Roth, the writer and director of Cabin Fever, has given us one of the most tense, heart pounding, arm chair grabbing and edge-of-your-seat thrilling horror movies in recent memory. I have to say I was a little surprised because, at the risk of being bombarded with emails asking me if I am crazy, I didn’t particularly like Cabin Fever. It was OK, dark comedies are tricky to pull off as it is, so I suppose it was a very ambitious undertaking. An A for effort but I found it to be off the mark.

That being said Hostel is a clear step in Roth’s journey into becoming an amazing writer. There is a definite attempt to develop some characters, though it’s sort of incomplete, and he has an unbelievable knack for putting us right in the characters' shoes.

For example Josh, played by Derek Richardson, seems to be a little more gun shy about simply running amuck and having sex with everything that moves than his two companions. There are some definite hints that Josh may be harboring some homosexual feelings that are reinforced by his being the only character reluctant to engage in a sexual encounter with a prostitute in Amsterdam and demonstrated a few times more on a long train ride. Whether or not his reluctance is based on some moral objection is a bit ambiguous and this latent homosexual tendency is never actually explored in depth or fully explained. It has seemed as though Roth had an idea here but it was aborted as he lost himself in the rush of brutal horror sequences and endless sex jokes. It’s almost unfortunate because it may have actually added to the characters complexity a little bit and might have served as a springboard into some interesting situations and/or dialogue.

None the less, this movie isn’t really about well developed dynamic characters or poignant conversation. It’s more about putting some stereotyped characters in quasi-unique situations and then scaring the shit out of the audience. To that end; well done. The basic plot of the film entails 3 college aged guys backpacking through Europe and making their way from one Hostel to another. Josh, Paxton and Oli are told about a far removed little town where the women are plentiful and the men scarce, giving them excellent odds for amorous activity. So, smoking all the legal pot they can handle the three set off for the creepiest little town you can imagine and find themselves almost instantly having sex with beautiful young women. But there is an inevitable price to be paid for such reckless abandon. In fact, Roth seems to want us to understand the dangers inherent in blindly pursuing life's pleasures with little thought to consequence because the principal characters have several chances to escape their gruesome fate by simply abstaining. There are several indicators that something isn’t right in this town that’s not even on a map and had they stopped being horny for an hour or two they just might have figured it out.

Though it’s not generally a subject worth noting, I have to say that the sets in this movie, from the town, the nightclubs, the Hostel and the eventual warehouse scenes are absolutely perfect. I can’t imagine a place that would have been more creepy. Why is it that a dirty, grimy warehouse or bathroom is all the more scary when it’s in some foreign land than in say, New York City or LA? Well, for one there’s this sense of being cut off from everything familiar. That might be OK until something goes wrong and then you just don’t know where to turn for help and you’re so very far from home. Nothing’s familiar and nothing's comfortable. There’s a sense of true escape being just impossible. There’s desolation and hopelessness at every turn.

Roth was truly amazing at making me feel tense during this movie. Yes, there was gore, plenty of it, but nothing that would normally make me wince like this film did. It’s all stuff I have seen before but still, it was somehow made worse here and I’m not ashamed to say I just can’t put my finger on all the "why’s" of that fact. It’s likely a culmination of the tight pacing, foreign setting, excellent direction and the plotline that do it. You see, the monsters in this film are not strange undead characters struck by lightning and endowed with superhuman powers. Instead they come in all shapes and sizes, display initial reluctance to perform their gruesome feats on occasion, and could be living next door to us. They are mortal men doing this; not to satisfy some need for justice at having been drowned in a lake or for having been burned at the stake, but simply to satisfy curiosity or bloodlust. This is both a fascinating and terrifying take. The movie explores the actions of sadistic, murderous, demented psychopaths. These people have a need to torture, maim and kill for no real reason. They appear to be amoral and seem to have no empathy or remorse. It is extremely unsettling to know that it is not just one or two people that are participating in this, but a slew of them. And not once do you stop to think that there is just no way that there are that many people partaking in this sick passion, so skilled is Roth’s direction and so tight is the script.

Without ruining anything for you let me say that there exists a very interesting revenge component to the movie. A nice little piece of writing that turns the tables on the audience and gives them a little bloodlust of their own. It leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth, as though you stop and wonder: Did I just root for that to happen? Jeez, I’m as bad as the monsters in the film now. The shoe is on the other foot and I’m the one applauding torture. How did that happen?

It takes unmistakable skill to make an audience empathize with characters that are being tortured and slaughtered when you’ve seen it all before. It takes amazing talent to make the audience feel actual and honest fear for a character. To take the scene when you’re looking through the eye holes of a mask from the captive's point of view, a scene we’ve all seen before, and make you gasp a little at the predicament you feel the character in. I can’t remember the last time that I paused during a film to realize that I was gripping the armrest of my seat so firmly that it was uncomfortable. I also can't remember the last time that I actually saw a fellow audience member turn his or her head and sigh deeply, as though going through something that was so draining that they felt exhausted.

Sure, there were things that could have been done better. The sexual antics and attitudes of the three main characters was a bit overdone and heavy handed. The callousness of some of the participants in the evil going’s on was a little over-the-top. And it would have been nice to know the characters just a little better, so that I could have been invested in their well-being just a bit more. But, all in all this was one of the scariest and most tense experiences I have ever had in a theater. I can't wait to see what Roth turns out when he is a seasoned and more experienced writer. This movie was just a little short of being a true horror classic and, in my opinion, it was well worth the experience.

A little more attention to character and a bit more subtlety will serve him well as his career continues. Roth is a definite work in progress and I would bet the farm that he will eventually write and direct a horror classic that goes down as something definitive of the genre.

Go experience Hostel because that’s what you do with a movie like this; you can’t just view it in some detached manner. You can’t watch it—you feel it. That’s the hallmark of a great movie and this certainly qualifies. Our friends at Football and Beer told me before-hand that this movie felt like the movie-goer's equivalent to skydiving. It has that same adrenaline pumping, heart pounding rush of action and danger. It was a fantastic description of this film. A true rare experience and well worth the price of admission. Moviemojo heartily recommends this film.