Like a rotting corpse: plenty of blood and guts, no brains.

Rating: 5/10 (5 December 2006)

When we first meet our pair of backpacking, holidaying American students and their excitable Icelandic travel-pal, they could be displaced from the American Pie franchise. Loud and foul-mouthed, they look to Europe as a means to sate their lusts before flying headlong in the rigours of adult life. All they went from Eastern Europe is to get backed, boozed and bonked. They are, in short, pretty obnoxious, intensely dislikeable for their blinkered hedonism, overall stupidity and Neanderthal attitude to women.
Thus, when they are told of a mysterious, near-mythical hostel in deep Slovenia by a fellow day-tripper, they can't resist finding out about it. Early signs bode well: buffed, nubile women deck the halls and are liberal with their bodies, and the alcohol and drugs appear to on tap. However, they also start to missing, one by one Becoming increasingly desperate in his search for his errant mates, Paxton's worst fears are met when he wakes up handcuffed to a chair in a veritable charnel house, an unwilling subject for some wealthier tourist to slash up.
Born out of a mixture of hard-core horror, a seemingly intelligent philosophy on the spectacle of pain, the current climate of global fear, memories of frat-boy ramblings and some dubious European post-war climates, Hostel certainly stirred up the press a bit, and also the box-office, out-running King Kong and The Chronicles of Narnia  no mean feat for a low-budget sicko horror flick with racy material and no major stars. So kudos to Eli Roth for pulling off a minor coup; he directs with gusto throughout, clearing enjoying this opportunity to make a film that it is once commercial (it clearly aims to take advantage in the post-Saw thirst for sadism) and also smart. The film raises themes about Americans abroad, the nature of tourism and also the reason why we feel drawn to watching violence on screen. Note: it raise these themes, does not examine. Hostel is a failure.
Technically its put together with some punch, and if not very distinguished, it's still a slick, competent package. Roth also wisely places some confidence in an intelligent narrative device: the first forty minutes of the film are larkish and funny, despite the obviously sinister undertones. Having put the audience on the back foot, Roth lets rip with carnage and guts. Sadly, the film never rises above its initial success. For one, the scenes of torture are purely visual and not psychological: they're nasty to look at but not horrible to think about, because Roth and Tarantino never offer intelligent discourse on WHY people pay to hurt others. We certainly come away thinking they're sick mothers, but we knew that already  and they fail to develop a potentially promising allegory on the similarity of real life and cinematic spectacles of violence. Also, the last quarter of the film fails to be very atmospheric, with Roth, his cinematographer and design team failing deliver a compelling environment; predictably, the bloodshed all takes place within a dank, rotting former factory, and one that has no character. There are hints at some sensitivity for the fallout from wars and the USSR, but again, these are never developed. Worse still, the final third of the film turns in a run-of-the-mill escape-and-heroism story, which trivialises everything that has preceded it and might leave some viewers yawning.
There's been some interesting debate about whether or not the film is an extension of fear or xenophobia on the part of American filmmakers, and though Roth has said that he made the film partly to demonstrate American's ignorance of the world around, but what are they ignorant of? Is it that they're wealthy tourists who blunder into dangerous situations after failing to research properly, in which case they're no different from anyone else, or that they just didn't know that Slovakia has a profitable torture industry, and they should avoid it? Is it a parody of American attitudes, or a warning? I can't make up my mind, and that ambiguity is a flaw. The film becomes disgustingly self-righteous in the closing scenes and indulges in stupid bit of revenge violence, and while the survivors appear to have changed, there's no hint that that they've become wiser to the ills of the world, and they're place in it. They'll be just be more afraid when they travel.
That said, there are a number of moments that do work very well: one character killing themselves when they realise they'll be scarred for life; another mocking the hero as he's dragged off ("that makes you MY b**ch"); a torturer gagging his victim when they realise he can speak his language; or a pack of marauding street urchins, who'll bash heads in for sweets. But those are the only moments that really made me flinch or sit up, and amount to about five minutes out of an hour-and-a-half film.