Hostel

Hostel (Director: Eli Roth)














Roth did Cabin Fever. He also wrote this. Quentin Tarantino produced this along with Fresh director Boaz Yakin, among others. Japanese horror director Takashi Miike (Ichi the Killer) makes a cameo.

The American male fantasy of going to Europe, smoking lots of legal dope, getting wasted, and meeting hot Euro-babes ready to put out is a sort of staple in American film. I last saw it with Eurotrip. Here, Eli Roth takes the idea of instant gratification at a price and extends it to murder. The results...well, read on.

Paxton (Jay Hernandez), his writer friend Josh (Derek Richardson), and their foreign buddy Oli (Eythor Gudjonnson) do that Euro-thing and then hear of a secret hostel where hot babes just want to screw your brains out because they're genetically pre-disposed to do so. They find this place, and it's everything they could dream. They get a room and there's lusty chicks just dressing and undressing in there, mentioning that they're going to the spa and they should come later. Of course, who the hell would pass that up? They meet the girls, they go out and dance, they take mind-bending drugs, they get some unbelievable girl-on-top action. Then one disappears. All he leaves is a cryptic cell phone picture. What the hell happened?

I don't think it's much of a secret, considering the trailers advertise this aspect of it. But how is it as horror? It's actually very good--but it takes a good long while to set up. It is by no means a masterpiece, but it certainly beats every horror film released in 2005. It's got a lot of originality to it, and that really helps its buoyancy--but things I find scary are a little different from most. Some people may find lots of blood and unusual limb severings to be their cup of horror. Me, I find those creepy cell phone pictures to be the scariest part of the film.

And the question is, Is horror supposed to be something you'd rather look away from, like ants crawling over a dead squirrel, or is it supposed to give you an uneasy feeling throughout, or is it both? I'm sure there's a school of thought on this--your classic horror movies like the original Haunting, The Shining, Psycho, Les Diaboliques, Halloween, and so on relied on mood more than visual kryptonite. But there are other "classics" that went for oodles of blood to be their horror and it has proven to be lucrative. This is an example of the latter, and as such, it's a good representation.