Entertaining horror flick - and nothing else!

Rating: 8/10 (22 May 2006)

Hostel received some really bad reviews, some of them claiming it to be one of the dumbest films of 2005. I do not know where you spent your last year, folks, but suppose it was not at the pictures, because when I last checked, there was a real sh*tstorm of much much dumber movies going on in cinemas. But then again, here in Germany the usual Hollywood crap is accompanied by even worse German productions full of fabulous new young actors that all make you want to scratch out your eyes and fill your ears with burning hot lead and finally, say, crack open your own skull and eat your own brains.
Accidentally, the Slovakian torture house in Eli Roth's Hostel is very much like a German movie theatre. Only the scratching and cracking is done for you. The story is simple: two Americans come to Europe, accompanied by an Icelandic friend they enjoy the two foundations that made Europe what it is today: drugs and girls. In the Netherlands they meet a guy who promises them more drugs and girls somewhere near Bratislava, they go there and end up in a death trap. Until the torture house sequence the viewer has to endure / enjoy a load of party, fun and sex scenes. There is a lot of stupid jokes and bare breasts in this. The somewhat uninteresting second act is about the guys wandering around in town, sensing something strange going on (and one by one disappearing). The third act is straight-forward disgusting Miike torture action (and Mr Miike even does a short cameo here). There is some good suspense in this part and, of course, a mother-load of gore.
I guess Hostel received most of its' bashing for being a movie with the name Tarantino attached to it while not being a Tarantino movie. Do not be fooled! Hostel does one thing very well, and that is to entertain and to keep up your interest for the whole length of the movie, and that is precisely where most American horror flicks fail today. It is a good mixture of old Italian horror, Fulci style, and modern Japanese extreme horror. It strays from the boring "Scream" and "I know what you did blah" concept of having one villain with some trademark outward appearance, but presents a bunch of nameless, multinational businessmen given the opportunity to let out the darkest parts of the human soul. The need to torture and kill which normally resides inside a sleeping repressed part of your mind is the real antagonist here. That idea, the sheer possibility of human beings paying to torture and kill another human being is what fascinated me most about Hostel, even beyond the extreme scenes of violence. That said, I have to admit that Hostel often looks kinda cheap. Effects are all well done, but camera and lighting are nothing to get excited about, to put it mildly. The score is sub-par, often even annoying and very cheap and cheesy. Acting ranges from okay to good, surprisingly, with brilliant performances by Eythor Gudjonsson and Jan Vlasak. All in all, if you are into horror flicks, go and see this one, it is vastly entertaining, brutal and fun at the same time.