Bohemian Cinema By Jonathan Pacheco

“Hostel” (2005)

Directed by Eli Roth

Satisfaction:Disappointed Tags: Eli Roth, Torture Porn, Horror, Gore, Violence

I don’t watch many horror movies, but this is what I made of Hostel.

I can’t imagine taking this film seriously, mainly because it’s not supposed to be taken seriously. I have also concluded that:

• No sort of commentary on violence exists in the film.
• It’s not particularly scary.
• It’s gross, but not really that gross.

But I also think that out of those three things, Hostel was only trying to accomplish one of them. The intentions of this film are not the same as a movie such as Saw (or at least the Saw sequels). Not even close. Movies like Saw aspire to be gruesome, creepy, and disturbing. They take themselves and their excessive torture seriously (again, at least the sequels do. I suspect the original was a little smarter and didn’t mind a little bit of camp sneaking in). Yet despite its premise, and despite its similarities with Saw, Hostel does not aspire to be a film like this.

But let’s back it up a sec. Paxton (Jay Hernandez), Josh (Derek Richardson), and Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson) are backpacking through Europe, basically looking for chicks. One night some sleezy guy tells them about a Slovakian hostel full of young, exotic, naively lustful young women. Sounds like paradise, so the boys go on over. Eventually, people start disappearing, and we learn that they’re being taken to a very dirty building and are being tortured and mutilated. Why? For pleasure, of course!

On the surface, Hostel is an acceptable, if a little lame, gore flick. But I’m more concerned with what Eli Roth was trying to do underneath the surface.

HostelThe aim of Hostel is to be a movie in the tradition of old 70’s and 80’s horrors—the cheesy kind that you’d see at a midnight screening full of hooting and audible cringing. It’s intended to be a tongue-in-cheek affair for horror geeks; what else would you expect from Quentin Tarantino and the guy who directed Cabin Fever?

I can see what Eli Roth was trying to do with Hostel. Look at the first act of the film: a bunch of college guys having sex with beautiful naked women (notice the cheesy “paradise music,” when the guys arrive at Slovakia). Almost the entire first third of the film has nothing to do with the “plot,” mimicking the trashy flicks that Roth and Tarantino grew up with. These are the kind of movies that you might have seen on late night cable channels in the mid-nineties (or was that just me?). These are the kind that look like they’re heading for the porn kingdom, then they turn into a completely different flick.

This is what Hostel aims for, but it never reaches it. It’s one thing to model yourself after a type of genre film, but it’s another thing to go beyond the film, to comment on the genre. Hostel would have been a better film perhaps if there was more self-awareness from the director or the plot, or on the opposite end of the spectrum, if there was no self-awareness at all. In that case, I would suggest an extreme plunge into the genre, full of cliches, anti-cliches, and much, much more gore. Another approach would be to hide the genre roots completely, with them only being revealed through keen observation (the attempt that the first Saw took and somewhat accomplished).

Instead, Eli Roth plays it safe. He rides the fence: he doesn’t reveal his cards too much, and he doesn’t hide them enough. Instead of making a film that was a satire of gore flicks, or one that could be the mother of all sleazy movies, he merely makes…another one of these movies. His film is no worse and no better than the ones he’s paying homage to, which sort of makes Hostel pointless, doesn’t it? Why should I toss Hostel into the mix when I can watch the real deal? Why should I toss Hostel into the mix if it doesn’t enhance the experience, if it doesn’t provide any insights? Why should I toss Hostel into the mix if it doesn’t embrace its concept as a way to make it a better genre film than those others?

If Hostel really is the film that I saw, then I shouldn’t.