Horror Evolution

Rating: 8/10 (22 January 2006)

Finally - a horror movie that nods to the Japanese greats (Audition, Ju-On) and is accessible to US viewers.
I am really excited about this evolution - having grown up on Friday the 13ths, The Shining, The Exorcist and Halloween, I'm glad to finally see the genre move away from the much studied and lampooned "Men, Women & Chainsaws" formula to a new style (which is probably bound to become formulaic, but at least it will be a new formula, eh?).
I saw Hostel with trepidation. I've been disappointed by American horror movies over and over - we even saw previews for some of the same old, same old - "When a Stranger Calls." Sigh - now our childhood slumber party stories are being turned into movies. I eagerly await the one about the escaped crazy man with a hook and the teenagers necking in the car.
The reviews I read were mixed - one of them caught my eye though. In the SF Gate website, the reviewer mentioned that the first part of the story wasn't horror - a bit funny, even. I immediately thought of Audition by Takashi Miike.
How pleased was I to find that Miike made a cameo in this movie?! The story starts out normal enough - a couple of Americans are in Amsterdam, partying it up - Roth even puts in a sly reference to the carnival aspects of Amsterdam that most Americans see when they go there when one of the characters asks "Do any Dutch people live in Amsterdam?" They move on to Slovakia - and I remembered my own European jog - the alien-ness of the newly accessible Central Europe. It is beautiful and seems desolate. Like other parts of the world, the environment makes you cast aside any ideas you had about privilege. No one really judges you for being American but there is no safe-haven either. There are few embassies and far less English is spoken than in other countries. You've got to behave yourself and hope nothing bad happens.
Roth's message is clear. These boys are like pampered beef wandering out of their pens and into the wilderness. They are picked off one by one, the last finally realizing, through a series of mishaps that something odd is going on.
Then the horror begins. The character I liked least, the pretty, lets-get-laid, smarm meister becomes the hero. That was a nice touch. Roth does a great job of setting up a series of situations that allow you to hope he will escape. He nearly does - and then, in typical hero style, goes back for the girl that he wasn't even interested in screwing (also a nice touch).
Like Audition, the ending is satisfying from the viewer's point of view. There is no lingering feeling of "darn, he was so close to getting away" and a nice dose of revenge. Although it was satisfying, I was a tad disappointed by the ending.
Before I wax philosophic about my own trip to Central Europe and how I misplaced a traveling companion there for a bit, I will conclude this review. However, this movie is definitely worth seeing - and hopefully the director's cut on DVD is not too far off.
Yea Eli Roth!