Believable

Rating: 10/10 (22 April 2006)

Thilling, really sucks you in. Many(including me and my wife) mistakenly thought it was a Tarantino movie but he is just a producer. In reality it's the second big release from Eli Roth, the director who did Cabin Fever. As someone else said Hostel is a better movie than Cabin Fever in every way. Like Cabin Fever, it's pretty heavy on the realistic gory spfx. Horror fans will not be disappointed with this one but there is more to this movie than that crowd is usually looking for.
Hostel starts out like a buddy movie with a few echoes of Eurotrip. The humour is incidental to the plot, the jocular type you might expect given the situation. Roth went out of his way a bit to include a nod to Peter Jackson in a scene that involves an altercation with an "Angry Elf." Roth had his share of crap from LOTR fans walking out of his last movie... many went to see it solely because Cabin Fever was praised by Jackson at the height of the LOTR's popularity. This was the first taste of how skilled this director is at weaving layers of meaning into his movies.
In fact the Hostel reminded me quite a lot of Hitchcock movies the way it meanders while setting the stage for the nastiness to follow. Like Hitch, Roth is skilled at building suspense rather than diving right into the madness like most horror flicks do. And like most Hitchcock films the Hostel can be enjoyed on many levels. Their is the top layer where neither disappoint in providing escapist entertainment. And then there's all the deeper stuff that film buffs get off on. One of Hitchcock's standard layers was having characters who make morally wrong decisions and then end up being punished severely in a seemingly unrelated event. (think of Janet Leigh, how did she end up at the Bates Motel? Well she stole some money from her boss and was on the lamb. Of course Norman Bates had no idea about this -- he didn't even bother with her purse when he disposed of her and her belongings -- but the director did. This relationship plays itself out in several of his movies.) This relationship between loose morals and being punished in an unrelated way is a strong element of the Hostel.
There is a social/political layer in the Hostel as well. And it is believable. The most believable element is that people in Europe generally don't like American tourists. The movie explores this reality in the extreme. But there is something even deeper than this going on. The film presents a view of where those who develop boredom with sex tourism could logically end up. In an exaggerated way it shows how this industry destroys lives and communities. In the "Slovakian" town the buddies end up in, war has provided a culture where people are not bothered by cruelty and human life has no value beyond what tourists are willing to pay for it. On the one hand it has some tourists being victimized by the prostitutes in that the tourists become the commodity. But as it is in the real world of sex tourism, it is the uber-rich (some of whom get punished in the Hitchcockian way tho) who end up victimizing everyone. To show how clear the directors vision is in this area there are two Asian women, tourists, that are really the only ones who succumb to a tragic end without having done anything to "deserve" it. I hope that people can get past the sensational gore and think about the larger issues this film explores. Damn fine movie with something for everyone (over the age of 18 ;))