Eli Roth Avoids The Sophomore Slump...Makes Shock Cinema Accessible to American Mainstream Audiences

Rating: 9/10 (4 February 2006)

RUN! Run as fast as your spindly American legs will take you to the nearest movie theater playing "Hostel." I understand this is going to be hard since the film was released in early January and most theaters don't hold a film of this nature for more than a couple of weeks, but find it!
Like so many jaded horror fans of yesteryear, I approach the modern slasher flick with very low expectations. Even when they're the follow-ups to films that I like. In this case, I was a pretty big fan of writer/director Eli Roth's debut feature Cabin Fever. Not so much for its outstanding achievements in horror, since it was, after all, just a cleverly crafted retread of many other horror movies. No, more because it reflected Roth's obvious enthusiasm for a then-dead genre and gave us plenty to laugh and marvel at.
When I learned of Hostel, I wondered if Eli could deliver a superior horror movie in a market flooded with bad Japanese remakes ("The Grudge," "Dark Water," etc.) and bad American horror sequels ("Saw 2," "The Ring 2"). But his name was on it and I am nothing if not loyal. So I went to see it with my lovely and loyal assistant, figuring it would be a good way of getting her to cling to me for two hours in a darkened room.
As fate would have it, I ended up being the one squeezing her arm until it turned blue and "Hostel" proved to be one of the most queasy, enervating emotional experiences in cinema.
The music was overly-dramatic at moments that were unnecessary and served only to dumb down the First (and most tiresome) Act. The first 25-35 minutes of the film seem to crawl by as the two sight-seeing friends and their drifter companion go to every arbitrary disco, orgy and hash bar from here to Bratislava. Not that I'm judging. After all, these are a group of horny guys let loose in the sexually and chemically liberated streets of Amsterdam. It just gets a little old.
But even at its less thrilling points, the film kept our eyes open with color and Frat boy humor. Examples of this can be found in the casting of the tweaked out European kid with the mole lip who tells our main characters about the hostel in Slovakia. If Corey Feldman and Dov Tiefenbach (see: Jason X) smoked a bunch of crack and had a love child, this guy would be it. The silhouette scene, a moving shot through a bluish-hued corridor of sexual abandon, was not just artfully done, but served as a sharp foreshadowing contrast to what awaits the young men at "The Art Exhibit." Another highlight that keeps the film moving when it sputters out is the Bubblegum Gang, a group of impoverished little kids who roam the town, mugging tourists.
There are only a scant few places in this world that share the architectural beauty and weirdness that Slovakia possesses in the film. At first glance (before the bodily fluids are spraying everything within arm's length), it looks like something out of Babes in Toyland or March of the Wooden Soldiers.
When the film gets going and the torture begins, that's when you remember why you paid full price to see it on the big screen. The torrent of bloody extremities and high-pitched screams are just a fraction of what Roth and Co. have concocted here. In each of the major torture sequencesparticularly in the case of a character choking out globs of vomit and tears through his ball gagthe anguish and fear are so unrelenting and real that you almost feel like you are watching the introduction to a snuff filmaccompanied by a motion picture score.
The film is a massive achievement for filmmaker Roth, even if he never makes another film like this again. Some would say, especially if he doesn't (alas, we'll never know since Eli has already signed up for the sequel). The visceral terror, the sheer realism of each of these scenes, is mind-boggling and when you think about it, it must be a lot harder as a filmmaker to provoke these sorts of emotions in your actors than it is to tell Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger to act gay. It's a far cry from the exaggerated "I made it! I (expletive deleted) made it! BANG! BANG!BANG!" of Cabin Fever. No sophomore slump here. In fact, Hostel is proof positive that real talent can only grow as it goes along.
From the creepy whistling of the Dutch Dissector to the heavy, excited breathing of the German Surgeon, there is nary a moment for one to catch their own breath once the horror begins. The desperation, how tight you'll cling to your life, is what really grinds the nerves into pixie dust. When we see a potential victim pleading with his would-be killer in the killer's native tongue, a language the victim doesn't he speak fluently, we realize that we will stop at nothing to keep our hearts beating.
And if you were afraid the film wouldn't have any time for memorable lines amid all the bloodshed, just wait until you meet the American businessman who is so fired up about killing somebody that he nearly bludgeons himself to death with his own gun. This role is played with expert wanna-be macho energy by Rick Hoffman.
Hostel is easily the most deliciously disturbing and formidably real horror film of the 21st Century. And what it lacks in subtle build-up to harrowing events, it makes up for in the very events in question.