Hostel

"hostel" is a brutal, disturbing examination of human beings most perverse and illicit desires. i loved it. this is the first film i have seen in the theater in 2006, and if every film this year is as good as "hostel", we're in for one helluva year.the film was written and directed by eli roth. roth was a protege of director david lynch who recently decided to strike out on his own. his first film, 'cabin fever", was an ambitious but ultimately mediocre effort. while it had genuinely great moments in it, the film was all over the place tone-wise and felt like a talented guy's attmepts to get his bearings. still, i had hope that roth could make good movies because he was included in bravo channel's special "100 scariest movie moments of all time", and roth was so knowledgeable of horror that he had a comment about almost every film on the list. someone with that much love and know-how with the genre was bound to make a great horror film eventually. now he has. he has found a better way to mix horror and comedy (which is done by alot of filmmakers even though it rarely works; for every film that mixes horror and comedy well, like a "re-animator", we have hundreds of films which end up sucking, like "scream 3". roth has solved the problem by having "hostel" start out as a comedy (the premise of the film is very similar to the film "eurotrip", with both films having action take palce ina country called bratislava, which i am not too proud to admit that i have no idea if it actually exists in real life or not) and then descend into drama and horror as it goes on.the commercials for "hostel" make a big deal about quentin tarantino "presenting" the film, but really all tarantino did was raise some money for the film and co-executive produce. his involvement was minimal, except as a great marketing tool (and it seemed to work; this weekend "hostel" was #1 and grossed $20.1 million, a figure which indicates that the film attracted a wider audience than hard core horror fans like myself and the types of people who saw "high tension" in the theaters, lol).the plot is as follows : two american kids (college-age) and an icelandic man they pick up on the way, are touring europe with the goal of smoking as much pot, taking as many drugs, and sleeping with as many hot women as possible. one night they end up staying with a guy who tells them that a poor country in the former soviet bloc has the hottest and easiest girls in europe, and our three protagonists travel there in the hopes of getting laid by really hot girls. little do they know that this is all a trap for a business in the poor country called 'elite hunting", a service that kidnaps young people and, for a price, allows you to lock a person they have kidnapped up in a room and let you do whatever you want with them, supplying them with various weapons and surgical instruments. our protagonists start to disappear one by one, which is all the more scary because these characters are trapped in a foreign land where they know no one, and are truly alone to try and survive.i can't go further without mentioning the nudity. this film has more nudity than soft core cinemax erotica. in a day and age where films are gradually becoming more puritanical under the neoconservative cultural movement afoot, it's nice to see a film push the limits of R-rated nudity like the films in the 1970s did. the beginning and middle of this film, before the real horror sets in, is a veritable boob-o-rama, a feast for the eyes for a perv like, well, like me, lol.as for the violence and gore, well, let me just say that the film is not as groy or as depraved as you might imagine from the previews. the film IS very violent and has plenty of gore to satisfy the horror fans, but the violence is safely within the boundaries of the r-rating. basically, the violence is more graphic than the recent 'wolf creek", but not as violent as "high tension". what makes "hostel" so effective isn't just the gore, but the fact that most of the torture scenes take place in dark, wet, dripping, moldy, concrete rooms lit with a green tint as if we are watching a nine inch nails video gone horribly wrong.when we do get gore, it is not the usually enjoyable gore which looks obviously like a make-up effect. no matter how many horror filsm i see, the violnce rarely effects me. but you know what does effect me? surgery on tv. seeing surgery performed on TV makes me queasy (though i always end up watching it anyway). the biggest compliment i can pay the violence of "hostel" is that the gore feels less like a horror movie's and more like surgery.what made this film great rather than just 'good" or "scary" are the deeper messages of the film. as the film starts off in amsterdam we get our characters going to a prostitute in amsterdam, where one character comments on how "paying to go into a room with a woman and do anything you want with her is wrong" (that's actually a paraphrase and not a direct quote...i wasn't taking notes during the film to know the exact line of dialogue). this is the film drawing attention to the fact that sex and violence are both illicit desires harbored by humans, each individual harboring them to varying degrees. what the film is doing by showing the protagonists paying for sex and the villains paying to kill is that sex, violence, and all of human's most immoral desires are fast becoming commodities in our heavily capitialist world (the fact that the movie largely takes place in a former soviet country, one which is still fairly new in being capitalist after the pseudo-communist rule of the soviets, is no accident). we have put a price tag on our most illicit fantasies, desires which probably shouldn't be acted out, because when you have two people, and one is allowed to do whatever they want to the second person, that's not fair to that second person, even if you pay them. in part i disagree with this message (i support the legalization of heavily regulated and taxed prostitution), but i see the point, and the film is offering a nightmare version of the slippery slope we are going down. if we continue to insist that our basest desires be fulfilled, at any cost, we are not too far from "elite hunting". we have to keep oursleves in check, think morally and not just our hedonistic nature to feel good, or else the human race is doomed.too deep for a horror film? i don't think so. i think ti is this depth that separates the great horror films, like this and the first two "saw" films, from the crappy PG-13 horror films, or even the good-yet-unspectacular horror films like the recent 'wolf creek". even though we are only in january, i have a feeling that come this time next year this film will make it on my 10 best list (not the least of which ebcause horror movies hold a special place in my heart, and thus i am more partial to them than real film critics are).needless to say, i am recommending the film. if you don't like horror movies, or blood makes you queasy, or you don't want to walk out of the movie theaters disturbed and needing to discuss the film in conversation with your pals, this isn't the movie for you. you know who you are, people. "hostel" is a horror film for people who like horror films. if you are only a casual fan of horror, stick with mre mainstream, pedestrain fair. this is a haunting, deep, provacative, and intelligent horror film that still does it's job in titillating and scaring you...and it's one helluva way to kick off 2006.GRADE: A

Excellent

Something is going on out there. Films like Hostel, Saws 1 & 2 Wolf Creek etc represent something new in Horror.I found Hostel to be much more interesting than, say, Saw 2. Why?I can certainly see hating the film. That probably is the best response. But as I watched the film I suspected that a lot more was going on than met the eye. Obviously the film is supposed to be repulsive. And not all of the gore is supposed to be anatomically correct. But what's fascinating to me is how the film actually goes after the audience. Maybe some of the reaction against it is a feeling that you, the audience, are being attacked.What's the basic plot outline?A couple of typical American teen type guys go to Amsterdam to experience the legal illicit pleasures of open grass smoking and prostitution. Then they hear of something weirder so they follow the trail and mythology to Slovakia, where the girls are all just dying to give themselves to American guys. Then they have greedy dreamy sex and suddenly they find themselves in hell in some pay for torture dungeon (that was actually based on something real in Thailand). There on the film is about unbelievable torture and escape. Stupidity and naivete are crushed in the end.The teen guys in the beginning are so much a representation of exactly the audience at home that it is clear that the message of the film has to do with undermining the audience, which frankly really needs to be undermined. We Americans are so proud, dopey and naive that we may need films like this to make us shrink back into our seats a bit.Notice the film does not have any stock Goth images.The actual imagery is almost all World War 2, Communist, totalitarian and Holocaust which Americans don't have any natural defenses for, unlike Vampire and devil movies. Also because the movie was about paying to watch torture just as you have also paid to watch this torture yourself. The film also often goes for the eyes, which is an attack upon the film viewer. Eli Roth who is a very intelligent Jew certainly knows what the implications are, especially the Holocaust connections. In interviews (look for them online) he is quite articulate that the film questions the American frat boy attitude which sees Europe as a Disneyland of pot and hookers.The film also works because it gets close to the nerve of so much of the brutality in contemporary youth culture, then says you want torture? Fine. Here it is. But This does raise a lot of implications that should really be questioned. Saw 2 looks like a commercial work in comparison. Its pretty predictable. But then I had a pretty vivid recollection of Saw 1 when I watched it. I think the needle scene on Saw 2 is what really sticks (ooops pun alert) with everyone in that film. Hostel though is a central document of this epoch.(Plus Barbara Nedeljakova is a real find.)The real question involving many newer films circles around this: Why has torture become a dominant motif today? Wolf Creek is also here in this category and may be the toughest to watch of all of them.Here is a suggestion of other films in this new category ofSeventies Retro and Torture films excluding the recent crop of zombie films. They are all not on the same level to be sure. But as a unified message they nail something in the present.* Highly Recommended to understand the style.* Session 9* MachinistWrong Turn* Saw* Saw 2* Jeepers CreepersJeepers Creepers 2* Hostel* Wolf CreekVenom* High TensionThe Hills Have EyesThe Texas Chainsaw Massacre* Silent HillThe House of WaxCabin FeverHouse of 1,000 Corpses* The Devil's Rejects