Eye Gouging as Political Statement

Rating: 9/10 (17 January 2006)

After the shockingly inept 'Cabin Fever' nobody could have been as stunned as I was to find that 'Hostel' is actually a very good movie.
Firstly, Roth manages to bring a surprising sense of authenticity to the story. Anybody who has spent anytime backpacking around Europe will recognize the seemingly insane risk-taking, the unlikely friendships, the co-ed dorm rooms, the intensity of short-lived friendships, and the very real sense of poverty, resentment and depression lying just under the surface of quaint, picture postcard villages in post-Communist Eastern Europe. By hiring local actors, and choosing to film on location, rather than on the generic Euro-backlot at Universal studios, Roth is able to give the whole film an unusual degree of realism that lifts the film above its generic genre foundations.
Secondly, Roth purposefully avoids the usual, vaguely racist, cliché of portraying every American as attractive, funny, and likable, and every European as either mildly inbred or wildly pompous. In 'Hostel', the American backpackers are depicted as the arrogant and patronizing teenagers that so many of them are. When Paxton complains that Slovakian television should carry English subtitles so visiting Americans can understand it, we are invited not to laugh along with him, but to shake our heads at his stupidity. It's rare, and refreshing, for a mainstream teen-orientated horror flick to be so derogatory against its own audience.
Thirdly, Roth's screenplay isn't afraid to take its time. In an age when horror films are expected to start piling up the corpses well before the end of the first reel, it seems almost revolutionary to see a script harking back to the genre's 1970's heyday. Characters are actually introduced and developed, and the plot slowly and believably evolves at a refreshingly leisurely pace. Even the climax has an old-school simplicity about it; logical and satisfying, without feeling the need for some tired twist ending.
Performances are universally sound, but Jan Vlasak is brilliant as the deeply disturbed businessman traveling half a continent to secretly give expression to his sociopathic fantasies. He gives us a fascinating character, generating a subtlety and depth that deserved more screen time.
'Hostel' is an excellent horror movie; one of the best of recent years. In grounding his story in a believable post-Communist landscape, in which the 'villains' are simply pursuing the Capitalist dream of making money at any cost, Roth manages to make a political statement whilst cutting off toes with boltcutters. And that's no small feat.