If you approve of real-life torture, you will love 'Hostel'

Rating: Null/10 (20 March 2006)

I have just watched "Hostel", and as a result, my mind is filled with a vast amount of anger and disgust at the content of this film. I am not the world's biggest horror fan, but will certainly watch 'mainstream' movies in this genre. "The Devil's Rejects" wasn't to my taste (athough I loved its prequel), but the film had many praise worth qualities, and proved Rob Zombie to be a director worthy of much bigger and better projects. "Saw" was great, "Saw 2" hohum.
"Hostel" however, doesn't even pretend to be a horror film. It is, instead, nothing more than a plea for the re-acceptance of the use of torture in the real world.
The film is cheaply made, with useless acting, and a cheap nasty use of untouched abandoned industrial locations. However, it is in this that the film is TOTALLY honest, for the film is concerned ONLY with scenes of torture and sadism, devoid of any context or dramatic purpose. The film ONLY comes to life when a torture scene is showing. The rest of the time, "Hostel" is like a very very inferior copy of a plot-free version of "An American Werewolf in Paris".
In the opening scene of "The Evil That Men Do", a low rent Charles Bronson thriller, we witness a bunch of would-be torturers receive a practical classroom lesson in the art of inflicting pain and humiliation on a real-life male and female victim. "Hostel" was made as a pure piece of desensitisation for such an audience.
I'm sure the renamed "School of the Americas", the main facility in the US for training the leaders of death squads that operate in various Latin America nations, has already placed a giant order for DVD copies of "Hostel" to use as a teaching aid.
There is NO black humour in "Hostel". No dark subversive comment. No plot to speak of. No irony and no invention. No decent editing, and no decent cinematography. The East European landscape is cheaply and artlessly shot. The sexual nudity is tedious in the extreme. All these negatives allow the film-makers to purify the central purpose of their film, an act of pure worship at the temple dedicated to the worst of Human crimes, murder by torture.
"Hostel" has but one message, that torture is now to be accepted as a normal part of the Human experience. When the use of torture by the West became commonplace in US facilities in Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba, and many ex-Soviet-controlled nations (eg., US military bases in Poland and Romania), we had a choice. To howl our outrage, and return Western Civilisation back to the values previously in place for at least the last two hundred years. Or to quietly submit, and embrace the new age of depravity. The makers of "Hostel" believe that we have voted for depravity, and wish to cheer that result as loudly as possible.
As a side observation, why was the film giving Slovakia such a kicking? Is this rivalry between the successful Czech Republic, and the other part of the former nation of Czechoslovakia. Torture and racism, what a lovely combination.
I can't score this movie for obvious reasons. However, if I could score for evil intent, "Hostel", like John Wayne Gacy, would score a perfect 10.
For those of you that would seek to misunderstand my position, I would explain that I am too squeamish to watch the whole of even the 'cut' version of Hellraiser 2, but I would NEVER dream of describing that film as evil. The often stupid and tasteless Italian exploitation horror movies of the 70's and 80's likewise always have some merit, and would never be described by myself as evil. For me, "Hostel" is a first.