From 2000 to 2006, before I met Josie (who's squeamish of horror movies), I went on binge of extreme cinema. I went to Fantasia Festival every year, browsed Arrow in the Head for countless hours and kept my ear to the ground for tips about the most fucked up movies. I've never really had any interest in seeing HOSTEL, because at that point, what could a movie that bragged to be terrifying in mainstream media do to scare me or gross me out? So, I kind of took a raincheck on this one. Fast forward to 2014, everybody except me has seen this movie. It became part of the cultural dialogue as a seminal horror film and everybody has an opinion about it, except me. I watched HOSTEL mainly to satisfy my own curiosity...and because I could do it for free on Netflix. Here's what I thought about it.
The premise of HOSTEL is vaguely familiar, if you'll allow me the euphemism. Two buddies named Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and Josh (Derek Richardson) are backpacking through Europe with a token Icelandic guy undergoing a midlife crisis (Eythor Gudjonsson) and are being dicks to everybody. They're doing as much dope as they can and are attempting to fuck as many girls as possible, but it's never enough. In Amsterdam, they're getting clued into a secret slut city near Bratislava, Slovakia, where poon is easy and abundant. Paxton, Josh and Icelandic Guy never stop to ask themselves whether or not they are dumb tourists lead into a deadly trap. Protagonists in movies like HOSTEL lack the basic surviving skill of a lab rat and are lead to their agonizing and spectacular death.
HOSTEL is one-third a slasher movie, one-third a love letter to THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (like many movies that came before) and one-third a snuff film. It has the elements of an original movie, but it fails to blend them together. HOSTEL juxtaposed its ideas so blatantly, it took me literally two sentences to pick the movie apart. Storytelling master Joe Lansdale discussed that important distinction about blending genres before. None of the ideas vehicled by HOSTEL are particularly original and it fails to create an original object out of them. There are better movies about wealthy sociopaths paying to satisfy their lower instincts, albeit most are gore free. Ernest Dickerson's SURVIVING THE GAME, is a better time than HOSTEL and an all-around more original movies based on similar themes.
Now, about the violence....during my viewing of HOSTEL, I felt like wearing my ''I survived early 2000s Asian cinema...and all they gave me was that lousy t-shirt'' t-shirt. Let's face it, it's one of the main selling points of this movie and it's just not all that convincing. I'm not the biggest guy on gore, because I believe violence has many more layers of subtlety than just slaughter, but I cringed like twice. I've sat through pre-fame Takashi Miike movies likes VISITOR Q and IZO that had me on the edge of insanity. I unfortunately sat through A SERBIAN MOVIE and some movies of the Guinea Pig series. HOSTEL might freak out your mom or a 13 years old school girl, but any self-respecting horror fans will not bat an eyelash at what it has to offer.
HOSTEL is not infuriatingly bad by any means. It did not insult my intelligence. It's just lifeless. It doesn't have an identity of its own. Of course, if you're under 22, you might've missed the glory days of slasher movies and the ideas vehicled by HOSTEL might've seemed new to you, but I assure you they are not. I's a movie that goes through the motions, that uses tricks who all have been used before. It's surprising that a movie like this had some mainstream pull, but one look at the poster will give you the reason -> Quentin Tarantino's approval. In fact, I remember there was a confusion about his involvement in HOSTEL at the beginning. People thought he directed the movie. HOSTEL might scare you if horror movies are a yearly tradition at every Halloween, for you. But if you're a seasoned horror fan like me, do what I did for nine years and take a raincheck. It's nothing special.
