State of the art in intense horror

Rating: 9/10 (20 December 2005)

As a rule, I find horror films a little tiresome, but Hostel starts with a great premise and slowly builds up to some outrageous horror. The film tips its hat to some of the classics, and there's even a delightful cameo of Pulp Fiction playing in the background. It's not good that the premise of the movie is revealed in the IMDb listing as you don't learn the truth until near the end of the movie and it all starts to make a lot more sense. One thing about horror films which has always bugged me is that the bad guys never seem real to me, as if they are some kind of limitless satanic evil or whatever. In Hostel, by contrast, we really believe that the scenario is very plausible and for that, all the more frightening. I wouldn't be surprised at all if this kind of thing goes on in certain parts of the world. As far as maximum creep value, I saw it in a packed house at a screening in Beverly Hills last night, and many in the audience couldn't take it and ran out -- one guy was retching in the bathroom and was too scared to leave! The organizer had to talk him down and call one of his friends to take him home. The director was there for a Q&A which will be on the Creative Screen writing Magazine podcast, and he said that at one test screening they had to call a ambulances for two different people. It appears that the explicit sex, torture and violence will not be toned down for the theatrical release and it will still have an R rating instead of NC-17 which most of us thought it deserved. The trick, is that there is no sex during the violent scenes, and no violence in the sex scenes, which makes the MPAA more comfortable. By the way, this was shot near Prague, and is amazingly beautiful to look at -- I was there a month ago and the place is like something out of a fairy tale (unlike most historic European areas, there isn't a McDonalds every hundred feet). The ending is very, very satisfying yet believable and unforced. The audience was screaming, gasping, cheering, and hiding their faces at all the right moments. Eli's interview was a hoot, also, so check out the podcast once they post it on itunes. It's worth it for no other reason than to hear his anti-Union rant!