A bad, bad, very bad movie.

Rating: 1/10 (15 August 2007)

Even though there was some minor gore - nothing worth talking about however - this awful movie has been an completely waste of time and money. Of mine, as well of the makers, actors and producers of this so called film, being no more than a piece of junk.
Okay, this movie mightn't have had the intention to be known as one of great script and/or story line and it had it's arrows probably aimed at being gory to the max, but it hasn't at all succeeded in doing so. There was less gore in this whole movie than there was in the first ten minutes of, for example, Bad Taste (which also had a pretty meek story line to it, but nevertheless managed to turn out to be one (to me even THE) of the classics in gore).
Hostel is a very, very bad movie with an awful plot, countless errors in continuity and and a massive amount of absolutely nonsensical scenes and actions (like there is the miraculous escape of Paxton with Kana ...). It's also full of facts that don't (in any way) connect to reality. In Amsterdam, for all I know, they speak Dutch, not some invented whatever language (see scene in the disco somewhere in the beginning of the movie). And then, most of the people in The Netherlands speak English rather well, especially in the capital, and not with the strange accent as they do in the movie (like the fat guy in the coffee shop). When our friends arrive at the closed hostel at night in Amsterdam, they all of a sudden start speaking German(!?) to the aroused people that they woke up. Do hostels in Amsterdam these days really still have curfews? Get real.
This movie could probably have scored a lot higher if it were filmed from the other perspective (the torturer's, I mean). And not from the horny kids'. But who am I? Nobody, that's right. And I am not getting paid sh1t-loads of money for making movies. It'd be an interesting thought, though.
There's also something else I find very disturbing. And that is the fact that master producer, God himself, Quentin Tarantino PRESENTS this movie Why, Mr. Tarantino? Please tell me why. Because of a few scenes of gore? Don't try to convince me that it's about the story. Slovakia might produce, in the imagination of people who don't live in Europe, an image of a country that's inhabited with retarded people that speak a language that people wouldn't even teach their pigs if they were allowed to speak, but it has a history that goes so much further back than ... well, you know what I mean.
And then there was this subtle hint of the Russians, being the bad guys. Again? What's that American turmoil against Russia coming from, these days (besides the obvious)? I thought we all enjoyed Night Watch and Day Watch. Reading in the press that Russia was finally able to compete with Hollywood ... Russian e-mail addresses end on .RU and not on .RUS. Sure that everyone filming knew this, but decided to make it .RUS anyway, so people'd be sure to think that it was Russia behind all the atrocities, and that it was them we should blame.
Don't get me wrong, though. I am very PRO gory movies and atrocities visualized on screen (it's my favorite genre), but there's a thin line between good and bad. Man! This scene where Paxton is lying on the cart, under a bunch of corpses and where the butcher is cutting up the bodies in order to dispose of them in an oven (Treblinka?), is one of the worst things I have ever seen. It's SO stupid and not scary, gory of unnerving at all. At all! It's plain stupid and it therefore is (one of many) a good example of the movie's accomplishments. A nothing-movie, on all accounts.
True: the cutting off of the fingers of the bad guy on the end was more or less decently filmed. Why Paxton had to slit his throat, though, I'll probably never know. Wasn't he supposed to be so freaking' good' and honorable? He wasn't in this godforsaken country of Slovakia anymore, but in Germany. He could've called the cops. No? Well, whatever. I am happy IMDb gives me the opportunity to vent a little, after having an afternoon wasted on this junk.
Want to see gore, with a more or less decent story (or for that matter, a bad story but still watchable?), go and check out Saw I and III, for example. Or Bad Taste (if you haven't already) or, or, or. There's too many to name.
I am very sorry that mister Tarantino has sold his name to this very upsettingly bad movie. He's still one of my favorite directors, though. Maybe, mister Tarantine, maybe you should direct Hostel III yourself? I have very little faith that Hostel II will be any better. But, as I am, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and will watch it anyway, just for, well, whatever reason.
Dikke Jules