Hostel
Rated: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 34 minutes
Directed by: Eli Roth
Starring:
Jay Hernandez - Paxton
Derek Richardson - Josh
Eythor Gudjonsson - Oli
Barbara Nedeljakova - Natalya
Jan Vlasák - The Dutch Businessman
Jennifer Lim - Kana
Rick Hoffman - The American Client
Hostel is a film that critiques the insatiable appetite for violence...by making a movie that appeals to the viewer's insatiable appetite for violence.
Paxton (Jay Hernandez), Josh (Derek Richardson), and Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson) are happily backpacking across Europe. After leaving the comforts of safe Amsterdam (where it is remarked that there aren't any Dutch people there, you know, because there are so many American tourists, ha ha ha), the boys are enticed by a tale of sexual wonder but they have to go into Slovakia to get it.
For his male leads, Roth has three acceptable guys. As we watch them through the first act, they're neither likable for unlikable, but simply three dudes who want have a good time in Europe. At the very least, we don't ache to watch them get destroyed even if we don't have an emotional attachment to them. Roth wants us to identify with these young men, not admire them. They're not punished for being too good or too bad. They just made the mistake of visiting an impoverished Eastern European nation and sleeping with two hot women that were way too easy and way too cheap. Foolish mistakes, but such is the power of thinking with your cock.
Reading the reviews of greater gore-hounds, I find myself severely deficient in citing writer/director Eli Roth's sources (mostly because I'm a pussy who doesn't like scary movies, but since my friend Carl sent this to me and I couldn't sleep anyway, I figured I'd give the movie a shot). Apparently Roth's using 70s cult-horror-essentials like Cannibal Holocaust and to a greater extent, the work of Takashi Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer). And the failing is that he's trying to cram a mainstream picture into cult cinema. Of course, if anything, the success of Hostel demonstrates that the desire for gore has broken out of the cult and into the mainstream. The problem is that what made Roth's touchstones subversive isn't necessarily their gore, but how that gore was presented.
If you stop and think about Hostel, the last thing you'll find offensive is the gore.
You'll probably be more offended by the xenophobia, the misogyny, the hypocrisy, and Roth's cowardice. It's sad that Roth really thinks that gore is going to carry the day in his film. Because this film isn't scary, which I thought was the point of a horror movie. It's not like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre where the young girl runs from Leatherface but there's nowhere to run. It's not like The Thing where the terror is among you, unstoppable, and could fuck your shit up at any moment. Hostel is poor, defenseless, middle-class American getting his ass handed to him by Rich Whitey, evil heartless bitches, and goddamn impoverished foreigners.
I understand that Hostel is trying for some form of escapism. We do have a bloodlust and films like this can help to fulfill it. But Roth seems more interested in mindlessly contributing to that bloodlust rather than take an opportunity to explore it. There's a tremendous sense of insecurity at work here as Roth seems to genuinely want to emulate earlier gore exploitation films, but doesn't trust himself beyond the gore. The third act basically reneges on everything that came before as Roth rushes to the Hollywood standards that this film's progenitors' happily eschewed.
While there's no joyful irony in the film about the issue of the voyeur and the victim, I do take some pleasure in knowing that Quentin Tarantino, a master of amalgamating cult cinema and making it his own with absolute assurance, is the one "presenting" Hostel, the work of a filmmaker who may share Tarantino's love of cinema, but doesn't have a severed-pinky's worth of the motormouth's talent.
Words by
Matt Goldberg
1.2.08