Solid Second Film For Eli Roth

Rating: 8/10 (16 January 2006)

OK...forget all the hype...I'll give you the real deal about HOSTEL. Now of course I am one of the seemingly few who actually also liked CABIN FEVER, so I guess you'll have to take that with a grain-of-salt as well, but I think HOSTEL was a good second film for a director who definitely shows some serious potential...
HOSTEL starts off with 2 friends back-packing through Europe. During their "adventures", they meet a European "drifter" kinda guy and they all decide to pal around and check out the sights. They do the types of things that any young, single guys would do (namely - smoke dope and check out the hookers...) and while in Amsterdam they hear of this great place in Slovakia that houses all the hot poonanny. Sho' nuff they get to the joint and it's drippin' with hot European ass. The guys are all having a great time, until after a night of heavy partying with a couple of Euro-ho's - their drifter buddy disappears. This kinda worries the two Yankee cats as Euro-boy didn't bother to say any good-byes...but they chalk it up to the drifter mentality and try to put it out of their minds. Well, another hard night of partying goes on, and one of the American dudes disappears, too. This leaves the other American guy with no idea what's going on and he's obviously more than a little concerned about his homey's well being. The remaining American guy starts nosin' around as things seem pretty fishy, and one of the Euro-ho's tells the Yank that his boy is at an art exhibit. She takes him to some abandoned looking sh!t-hole place (keep an eye out at this point for a brief cameo by Japanese uber-director, Takashi Miike...) and tells him to go and find his boy. Obviously, the place is no art museum, and as our hero goes in search of his supposedly art-loving friend, HOSTEL really starts to take off...
Honestly, I really liked HOSTEL. It definitely is a little slow paced in the beginning, but I think that this was intentional (if not completely effective...) on the behalf of Roth. He said that he was going for an "AUDITION" (hence the cameo by Miike...)type of feel to his film, and anyone that's seen AUDITION knows full-well that that film is slow as dirt until the last 15 minutes or so. Personally, I would have preferred a quicker build up or perhaps a little more "teaser" footage in the beginning of the film. Even so, the last 30 or so minutes of HOSTEL really makes up for any lag preceding the "climax" of the film. And even the relatively slow beginning DOES have enough hot tits-and-ass to keep the average male (or female if you roll that way...) viewer interested. When the gore DOES come, it flys pretty heavy, especially for a U.S. theatrical release film. It's nothing compared to some of the more rough "underground" films out there, but still plenty of red-stuff for a mainstream film. Also, many people gripe about Roth's use of "frat-boy" style humor in his films. I personally think he does a good job of handling the funny moments and does a good job of knowing when to turn them on or off depending on the vibe of the scene. Not many directors can handle balancing comedic timing and horror in the same film, but Roth does it admirably well. Overall, HOSTEL is one of the better horror films of 2005 and is definitely worth a peep for any horror fan. It appears to already be another "love-it-or-hate-it" film (much like CABIN FEVER...) so I'm sure the debate on this one will go on for a while, but I give HOSTEL a very solid 8.5/10...