The Plot less mess or....

Rating: 4/10 (28 April 2006)

Indeed, Hostel is a very disturbing movie. Not for its graphic content, nor by its inherited nihilism: these two elements, by themselves, do not necessarily vouch for a disturbing cinema going experience. Instead, what does qualify as shocking is the complete lack of knowledge of the director as far as Europe is concerned. Accordingly, completely by passing important cultural aspects and reducing whole countries to vapid stereotypes, everyone in Amasterdam seems to speak fluent German, Slovakia is peopled with evil hearted creatures bent on exploiting foreigners, and Europe, overall, is the arena for sexual pervasion. Yet, achieving a sad kind of balance, we are introduced to a configuration of American clichés that walk about in the guise of characters.
The joint effect of the process of simplification becomes redundant and ultimately undermines the whole movie, virtually ruining whatever impact it might have sought to achieve. And that impact revolves around, and is centered on violence and how it can dehumanize both those unto which it is committed and those who sustain the injuries. So we are shown a parade of torture scenes that, by themselves, do manage to create a locus of hopelessness and despair and might even make fans of exploitation movies cringe and will certainly earn their praise. Yet these are the only scenes that have any interest and rammed between a slapstick beginning that is painfully bad in terms of both cinematography and content and a random escape sequence that dominates the movie almost right to the very ending when we are presented with a grand revenge.
Overall, the only redeeming aspects of Hostel are its adhesion to the exploitation mode and its somewhat watered down social comment that might be elicited from the similarity drawn between the brothel and the charnel house. And I am afraid these are not enough to save a very flawed movie and give it the cult status I suppose it hopes to garnish for itself.
However, one thing ought to be said about Hostel: at least it wasn't afraid to portray raw violence at its worst, offering a more realistic approach to the phenomenon than we are likely to find in American movies these days.