Wayward

Rating: 6/10 (7 April 2008)

Unlike most recent horror films, Hostel shows a genuine talent for scaring. But it also shows that to make the most of this the director needs guidance from somebody (probably somebody not Quentin Tarantino). In particular, this film needed a different scriptwriter (i.e. other than the director), a different cameraman, and a focus on what it was about, i.e. what kind of film it was. The idea of it would have made a very scary short story, and the film could have been as scary, whereas at present only a few scenes scare and the bulk of it is waste motion.
The writing and camera-work must be discussed together because both are to blame for the insufficiency of the build-up in the first part. Even granted the director is out to establish the protagonists' lifestyle (during their vacation) as one long hedonistic binge, this needn't have taken more than a few minutes. Where we needed to get to was where they were to end up; Hostel took too long getting them there. And once they were there, it didn't do much about this. We needed to see, with them, their first look at the country, the city, the street, &c. And with them we should have seen things that unsettled us increasingly: at first the kinds of things in other cultures you disapprove of but hesitate to condemn; then things alien, partly incomprehensible; then, in systematic progression, things that were confusing, sinister, dangerous, frightening.... Almost none of this is written into the script, and where it is, the camera-work doesn't deliver it. Some movies are able to instill landscapes with a sense of dread; sometimes you know how they do it, sometimes you don't but find your stomach unaccountably in knots; either way, some such method was required here. Most obviously wanting is the atmosphere of the hostel itself, which I'd expected to be the center of horrific activity (the movie would have been scarier if it had been; but of course this has been done before). The protagonists' experiences there should have added up to more than a few conversations with the girls; they, and we, should have come to wonder about the comings and goings of the guests (especially the goings), the behavior of the staff, movements and conversations glimpsed or overheard in the hall, through the windows, at night when everyone should be in bed.... More significant is the same want of detail of life outside. We see thieving children and a torture museum; these are too obvious, and not nearly enough. We needed to see indications of a callous, brutal environment where ordinary morals are eroded and everything is a commodity, with survival the bottom line; to see enough so when we get where the film is taking us we don't doubt for a second what we see because it's a logical extension of what we've seen before; of the very _air_ in that place.
Hostel's basic structure is the central horror film plot: a character happens onto a place (person, situation, &c.); at first it seems innocent, then suspect, and finally, when the character learns the truth, horrible. The basic problem with it here is the same as in almost every other film using it: it's just enough for a short subject or TV episode, and so must be stretched out to three or four times its natural length. If a film keeps to the confines of the structure, the ending is in effect no ending (that's IT?); if it goes beyond the structure into a third act, which almost has to be an account of escape or revenge, it also goes beyond the horror that is its raison d'etre; and since up to then it has been striving to convince us the horror is inexorable, in effect it's undoing what it's done (for examples of the two methods described, cf. the two versions of The Vanishing). Hostel takes the second path, but the director seems to realize he's gone beyond his original story, since he begins to exaggerate the horror and the action to Hong Kong-like proportions, dispelling the seeming seriousness with which he treated the harrowing scenes that preceded. However, in a story of this kind, any attempt at a third act is a trap, and Hostel falls into it. The script might at the beginning have introduced a larger context--war, the economy, anti-American feeling--and returned to it in the end; but that implies a more serious film than I think this one meant to be.
In other respects also, the script is probably most to blame for Hostel's faults. Padded as the story was bound to be, what would have filled it out somewhat was a more rounded characterization of the protagonists. The dialogue of the villains probably needed to remain elliptical to be disquieting in the way intended; but we should have gotten well acquainted with the protagonists, seen what each did uniquely, and understood why; scenes so informing us are absent. And there are what I consider misjudgments in structure. The scenes behind the credits are disturbing, but telegraph something of where we're heading and what goes on there, both of which would have been scarier without a prior look. For a first-act payoff, the film introduces a horror shot--its first, I think--and I think this was a mistake; the shot preceding, which would have planted the same suggestion but left us unsure and worried about it, would actually have been scarier. There are two second-act payoffs: one too many. They would have been more effective combined into a single one, probably with the second preceding the first. And finally, there is some unintentional misdirection. The credit scenes mislead us, in a way; and the horror climax--the second payoff--misleads us more: it implies a third level to the system shown that would have made it even scarier (though less credible).
In summary: a wayward film from a wayward talent.