An example of ineptitude creating comedy in every minute of its running time.

Rating: 3/10 (8 March 2015)

A film with a chilling concept that was ineptly handled â€“ Hostel. The idea of getting lost in some city â€“ a place which is so texturally rich like a big dark fantasia, which a film like Don't Look Now (1973) understood â€“ and succumbing to its vices and being subjected to a vast network of sadists which prey on tourists and offer these victims to a higher bidder is fascinating; it exploits our ignorance of these foreign countries and obliviousness when stepping into them, that feeling of being seduced by a great landscape and not knowing what waits behind that. In this film, you have a concept that is perhaps mildly intriguing? Something, somewhere, somehow, is driving people to suicide. Now, the fact that when these people are caught in this trap and mindlessly work to kill themselves they are benevolent, not trying to harm other people is different. Usually in these apocalyptic scenarios you have a direct threat which is visibly coming at you that you can defend yourself against, in the absence of that maybe people are more likely to turn against each other, the panic never abated by any comfort in the knowledge that you know what wants you dead? People, their human drama, their interpersonal relationships, their motives, their conflicts, their being interesting humans pitted against things, whatever that may be, this is what anchors any concept. And it's completely lacking here. Mark Wahlberg can be a wonderful actor, when the film understands who is he and what he is capable of. He's an actor that exists within such a limited spectrum, that he's basically always Mark Wahlberg, but a director can take that and deconstruct the character of Mark Wahlberg, and put him in a narrative that challenges him. Paul Thomas Anderson understood this, and with Dirk Diggler gave us a truly memorable character. Are we supposed to believe that Wahlberg is a science teacher?
This problem, of confused characters that are like children in a school stage play, extends to pretty much the whole main cast. Zip Zip Zooey Deschanel, is the biggest supplier of comedy, or excruciating agony, depending on one's perspective. Why did she do the things she did, and say the things she said? She is the biggest chasm in the film, which creates the divide between comedy and sincerity, because we generally never know which mode the film is operating in. As far as I can recall, Zip Zip Zooey's character is introduced with that wonderfully-naÃ¯ve-for-a-5-year-old line about 'all that evil being invented in the world' or something. I'm trying to understand the logical though process behind this dialogue. So that is clearly supposed to be dark bell hearkening man's evils, but it's hilarious. Comedy that is supposedly intentional, like the scene in which Wahlberg talks to a plant, is entirely misplaced because at that point it disrupts the (non-existent) atmosphere at point where countless characters have died and the ones who are left should be at the peak of human exhaustion.
I don't think anybody was particularly motivated when doing this, and if they were they're great at concealing it. In fact Shyamalan seems to be the one who has the most half-hearted convictionÂ…because he wants to chastise us about our negligence toward nature? The film's explanation is that the plants are releasing toxins as some sort of defence mechanism against humans, and the more humans who are grouped together in any one place, the more toxins is released? A student filmmaker could have employed this with more subtlety, and in fact Shyamalan has some pretty cheap tactics, including multiple lingering shots on the branches of trees, swaying in the wind (what if they're sentient, eh?), blatant juxtaposition in the form of a greenhouse in the foreground and big looming nuclear power plant in the background, and a scientist appearing on TV right at the end just to reiterate everything that we had figured in the first 20 minutes. This film was released in 2008. I get that global warming (and our general destructive tendencies toward nature) has been a pertinent issue for a long time, but as a hot news topic, it passed in 2006 with an Inconvenient Truth. What is Shyamalan telling us we don't already know? If I want to be chastised by a director, I'll put on a Michael Haneke film. So what you have is this narrative about plants retaliating against us, but nothing is explored beyond that very premise. In one of the opening scenes, in which Mr Jock is doing science stuff in class, he basically explains away the mysteries of nature as just that, something beyond our understanding. And in the great climax of the film, all the science-y stuff that was established is undone in one stupid act of sentimentality in the cheap guise of a Spielbergian triumph of human will and love.
There were some mildly interesting character elements scratching under the surface. Both Mark Wahlberg and John Leguizamo are teachers who only seem to be able to process the world through their chosen subject. Mark is constantly approaching everything through his scienc-y stuff, and in one situation he tries to (desperately) make scientific calculations in order to figure at how to proceed, as an entire group of people are killing themselves. Leguizamo is a Maths teacher, and can only effectively deal with something when talking about Math(s), as when he tries to calm a person down by giving them a maths problem. So what you could have had here is two dysfunctional guys whose severe problem is that they retreat into their profession in order to effectively cope with whatever is happening, because it's all they know. Instead you have to men who throw elementary bullshit at you, because that's smart right? And if they're smart, that means they're sympathetic, right?