Hostel (2005)
'No one is paying me. In fact, I'm the one paying them!'
Plot: A group of back-packing friends get more than they bargained for when they stay in a Hostel in Slovakia. 'More than they bargained for' does of course mean that some of them end up a bit dead. Or chopped up. Or chopped up dead...
Review: I really liked Eli Roths debut film Cabin Fever - as a low budget bloody horror it hit the spot. Blackly funny and not afraid to show some blood and guts, Cabin Fever suggested that here was a promising young director that was happy to indulge in some nice, spatter-horror. Enlisting Quentin Tarantino, Boaz Yakin and Scott Spiegel as executive producers on his follow up film, Hostel, Roth covered all bases in marketing terms leading up to the films release and talked it up a storm - rivaling even Tarantino in the excitable stakes. It was in fact talked up so much that anyone going to see it would have been expecting something pretty extreme.
Simply put, Hostel isn’t the film it should have been. It fails too many times to live up to its promises. Roth has a great central idea for the film – a place where rich people can pay to torture and kill people – and it has a lot of obvious horror potential. The problem is, he’s not really sure how to make a story out of it.
Hostel's opening scene is a suitably atmospheric credit sequence. Dark and suggestive, it begins to create a sense of menace that is lacking in the rest of the film. We then cut to a group of backpacking friends as they travel from Amsterdam further into Eastern Europe in search of a hostel which promises plenty of ‘pussy’. So far, so American Pie – and there’s a nice breast count to keep us interested. Of course, when they get there everything at this Hostel is not what it seems – you can pretty much guess that it goes pear-shaped for this trio.
Hostel is a film of two halves. Maybe Roth was hoping for a From Dusk Till Dawn style change in tone / tempo for the film, but heading into the film you know (roughly) what to expect. The marketing may have put bums on seats, DVD’s in players, but it actually lets the film down as we’re waiting for the horrors to begin. When it eventually kicks off, Roth makes an attempt to mis-step the audiences expectations with regards to which character the audience is going to be empathizing with. It sort of works, but it’s a little clumsy and such a staple of horror films since, erm, well Psycho, that it has little impact.
Sadly, when the gore does kick in it’s hardly groundbreaking or even that exciting. Limbs are cut and stabbed in much the same way as horror films have being doing for the last twenty-five years. Roth isn’t uncovering any new ground here no matter how excited he gets. It’s good mucky fun (especially when you hear the rumble of a chainsaw), but most importantly - and shockingly - of all: it's not scary. Not even a little bit. A little grisly? Yes. Scary? No.
Hostel's most successful, most uncomfortable moments are when it exploits fears of other cultures, of being in unknown countries where you’re not in control. A subplot regarding one of the lead males sexuality is well utilized, but also you get the feeling that Roth was totally oblivious to the strange homophobic undercurrents it creates given the rest of the films heavy heterosexuality.
Hostel is totally watchable, silly fun. Roth might not have mastered his material yet but he can write decent dialogue and get good performances from his actors. He’s hoping to make his name as the ‘horror’ guy and here’s hoping that he does it – maybe by not pulling his punches so often and adding some genuine scares.