Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with proof that you can't please everyone in the world. We posted around 6 positive HOSTEL reviews from Toronto and here is the first negative we've gotten. Actually, it reads more as mixed-negative (the "Captain" likes boobies, what can I tell ya'?). I'm hoping to see this flick soon. Maybe I can track it down when I'm in LA later this week... if not I'll just have to kidnap Eli Roth's brother and hold him hostage until he screens the film here in Austin.
Oh, and some of Roth's intro and Q&A from Toronto was recorded and put onto the web. Click here to see Eli Roth pump up the audience!. Enjoy the review!
Hey, the name’s Captain, and I too caught “Hostel” on its midnight showing in T.O. Having browsed through a lot the AICN feedback on this film, I must say that I’m surprised at the gushing generosity (no pun intended) towards “Hostel”. Maybe Eli Roth’s charm, in his intro and Q&A, rubbed off on everyonebut for me, “Hostel” was a large disappointment.
Consider the ingredients of “Hostel”: the second film from the creator of “Cabin Fever”; a plot based on an allegedly real snuff-like phenomenon in the Asian criminal underworld; a dialogue polish by QT; gore effects from KNB; promise of some Takashi Miike-type carnage and sadism; and filmed in Europe with no studio interference. Sounds like a recipe for a mean, new kind of horror movie, no?
Try “Eurotrip” crossed with half-assed aspirations to the cutting edge horror films we’ve seem coming out of Asia and other parts of the world. “Hostel” is juvenile, brainless gore hound-bait without the courage of its convictions.
The film starts off promisingly, however. The opening credits begin as we see close-ups of someone, in a darkened chamber, cleaning various menacing surgical implements and rinsing away apparent blood and bodily fluids, while whistling a haunting tune. The scene is minimal, utilizing ambient sound effects, and its implications are quite disturbing... Then the real movie begins and all hopes are dashed by the proceedings.
We meet three moronic young men, who are taking the hedonist tourist trek through Amsterdam, going to clubs and fucking prostitutes. Most of their dialogue is colored with expressions like “that’s gay”, “you’re gay”, “dude”, etc. After being exposed as the young assholes they are, they must take refuge in a creepy French kid’s apartment, who points them in the direction of a secret hostel off the beat and path, where beautiful nymphomaniacs await them. Our three young idiots promptly go there, of course, and soon start disappearing one-by-one. Eventually, a terrible secret is uncovered and our lone surviving idiot is left to fight for survival and escape—blah, blah, blah... the end.
Now, the three things “Hostel” have going for it are: 1) the aforementioned opening title sequence; 2) the beautiful, and often naked, European women; and 3) Rick Hoffman’s brief performance as an overzealous American paying to be a torturer/executioner. The rest of the film is boring, uninventive, unsuspenseful, and oddly sanitary. The gore is cheesy compared to recent efforts like “High Tension”, “Dawn of the Dead” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. There are better tendon slicing scenes in “Raising Cain” and “Pet Cemetery”. The “torture” in the movie is also lame. “Audition”, “Reservoir Dogs” and “Last House on the Left” (to name a few) put “Hostel” to shame. The main euro-villain poorly attempts to channel Hannibal Lecter, and a well-fed Jay Hernandez doesn’t really do much for me as a leading man. As for the locations and the look of the film, we get a bright, crisp and tidy Europe that, for the most plays like travelogue footage.
As for the sub-textual elements in “Hostel”—the parallel/contrast between a brothel with hallways of pleasure and the finale abattoir’s hallways of pain, and the role reversal of the “john’s” becoming the prostituted, so to speak—well, these elements are only dealt with in the most superficial manner, which is a shame.
I know I’m a dissenting voice when I say this, but “Hostel” appears to be Eli Roth’s big-screen sophomore slump.
