PLOT: Backpackers go to Bratislava to score easy women and dope, but instead encounter a thrill-kill outfit where hunting humans is the fun. Disgusting and brutally violent film.
Eli Roth made a clever little thriller called Cabin Fever a few years ago.
His new film, Hostel, really ups the ante in the way of gore and dismemberment, but the storytelling is not nearly as interesting.
For shock value, Hostel is likely nirvana for fans of the horror/thriller genre.
The film does homage duty, tossing visual nods to various Hollywood and Asian thrillers, but we still don't really see the point.
Three young backpackers in Amsterdam are amused by the abundance of drugs and the women available to them. Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and Josh (Derek Richardson) are Americans and Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson) is a like-minded traveller from Iceland. Their adventures heat up when a stranger advises them to travel to Bratislava. There, he says, you will find a hostel where the women are easy and the drugs are plentiful. And so the travellers set out.
Always accompanied by ominous music, they step off a train in Eastern Europe and the scenery is bleak. Soon, however, they are in a beautiful old village full of beautiful women, many of whom turn up naked and beautiful at the local spa.
There's a lot of story padding leading up to the blood-letting, and it's tedious. There's almost an hour of yawn-inducing T&A; then people begin to disappear. Paxton tells a wildly obvious story about a tragedy from his childhood. Gangs of violent kids roam the village where the men are staying.
Oli disappears. A girl has a toe cut off. Folks are ventilated with power tools and there are vomiting and screaming scenes a-plenty.
One of the characters stumbles into a chamber of horrors where the rich pay to live out their sickest fantasies of violence. Ho, hum.
The point of Hostel appears to be a cinematic game of 'dare.' The camera never pulls away; ergo, the violence on view is pretty terrible. And then there's the worrisome xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia and revenge fantasies -- intentional or not? If those elements are inadvertent then the filmmaker needs to spend his profits on a therapist. If those elements are intentional, then to what sort of audience is he catering? Creepy.
BOTTOM LINE: Hostel is a fictionalized snuff outing with a boring set-up and a revolting finale.
(This film is rated 18-A)
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