Nefarious Films Reviews

"Hostel" 2006

Director:  Eli Roth

Writer:  Eli Roth

Starring:  Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, Eythor Gudjonsson

Backpacking across Europe in search of a legendary hostel where the most beautiful women in Europe seem to go to get naked and have casual sex with anyone who crosses their path, 3 young men stumble upon something much more sinister, something involving trays of rusty surgical tools, chainsaws and manacled chairs...

Hostel has probably been the highest profile horror release for years; its arrival has been eagerly awaited for months. This is partly down to Eli Roth’s considerable skills of self-promotion, leaking tidbits and reports about the graphic and shocking violence his new film would contain. It is also (and probably to a greater degree) down to the fact that one Mr. Quentin Tarantino had put his name to it – enough to guarantee movie geeks everywhere would promote the film by word of mouth alone. As the release date grew closer the reports of how horrific and brutal the film was became more frequent. This was to be the worst, most sickening portrayal of torture and murder seen since well, ever.

The trouble with all this hype and publicity is that it is almost impossible for any film to live up to such heightened expectations – just ask any one of the hordes of people who camped outside cinemas to see The Phantom Menace. This is even more the case with a film that relies so much on shock tactics and gratuitous violence to carry the story in absence of any real plot or characters. It is testament to the sheer vitality and exuberance of the film that it gets away with it.

The early publicity and trailers for Hostel made it appear to be a serious delve into the darkness and depravity of the human psyche but while the events depicted in the movie are utterly appalling, the overall tone is too lightweight to leave much lasting impact. In fact the first half of the film, a celebration of the hedonistic backpacking lifestyle is as gratuitous in its display of hot young naked women as the second half is in its parade of hot young dead people. There are some uneasy parallels hinted at between the Amsterdam whorehouse the heroes visit at the start of the movie and the charnel house at the end of the movie but there is really very little connecting the two very disparate sections.

Other than for a blood-lust whetting pre-credits sequence there is no hint of the atrocities which we know are coming for a long time into the film. There are a few creepy moments here and there and there is a definite sense of wrongness in the Slovakian city setting but there is not enough substance to justify the long wait until we get to the real ‘meat’ of the film.

Once the horror begins however, it is everything that was promised – well, almost. Roth clearly delights in showing the barbarisms that occur in his nightmare house of death and it is ironically this gleeful pleasure that rob these scenes of that crucial sense of horror. It is vile, repugnant and certainly not for the weak of stomach – don’t expect to be forgetting the eye vs. scissors scene any time soon – but it is dangerously close to being cartoonish in much the same way as the Final Destination films (intentionally) are.

As the on screen carnage increases so does the implausibility and silliness of the film. It is as if Eli Roth has restrained himself for too long throughout the slow first half and is finally letting it all out in an extravagant burst of utter silliness. Just two examples of this are the gang of murderous children who roam around the city mugging people for bubble gum – don’t ask – and the ridiculous coincidence that the climax hinges on. It is easy to overlook all this because it is all such a guilty pleasure and Roth knowingly embraces this.

Hostel is an uneven film; its sparse plot is little more than an extended version of the Butch and Marcellus sequence in Pulp Fiction (thank you Mr. Tarantino) and it descends into utter silliness by the end. It is also a totally absorbing gore fest that’s more entertaining than it has any right to be. It’s sick, depraved and wrong but is the perfect antidote to the rash of sanitized anaemic teenage crap that has been afflicting cinema screens over the past few years.

Rating: 8/10