Sexual/Gender Viewpoint of Film Disturbing

Rating: 3/10 (18 January 2006)

From all the interviews I've watched and read from Eli Roth and Quentin Tarrantino, they both appear to be bright and well adjusted. Nothing I have read from either one of them could have prepared me for the unrelenting homophobia and misogyny of their film Hostel.
It has often been said that horror films really need a female protagonist to work. The movie Hostel appears to subvert that convention by appearing to be about an extremely sensitive young man (perhaps even a closeted one) on a trip through Europe. The standard horror film treatment of this topic would be that he would have to shed his more feminine attributes to survive and in the process would develop more self-knowledge.
Instead, we are treated to an abrupt shift in protagonist half-way through the film, no sympathetic characters, an incredibly xenophobic tour of Europe, female characters who are at best whores and at worst murderous sadistic whores, and a man who we are led to believe is a homosexual being drowned in a toilet filled with his own excrement. The one character we could have sympathized with is killed and the one we are left with is impossible to momentarily like. His late conversion from boor to hero is singularly unconvincing.
The film is so busy subverting horror film tropes that it ceases to be one and is instead a glorified snuff film. And not a particularly interesting example of that either.