A trio of friends are traveling through Europe, enjoying the hedonistic lifestyle of babes, booze and bongs. Whilst in Amsterdam they hear about a promising hostel in Bratislava, a town in Slovakia where the women are more than welcoming to foreign backpackers. Once there things certainly live up to expectations but, after one of them disappears, a more disturbing sequence of events are set in motion. Events that take the backpackers on a brutal journey into a sinister and sadistic underworld.
Marketed as one of the most sickeningly violent horror films of recent times Eli Roth’s second film could never live up to the hype. But does that make for a bad movie experience? Yes and no is the answer as Hostel is certainly a step up from Roth’s debut, Cabin Fever. Proceedings begin in a similar vein to more lighthearted teen movie affairs with a healthy dose of female nudity and drunken exploits. But once the real plot begins the tone of the film shifts effortlessly into more ominous territory.
What is most surprising is the relative restraint that Roth employs. Rather than rushing into the gory torture scenes he successfully creates an unnerving atmosphere. The sense of being a stranger in a strange land is expertly conveyed with Roth playing up to the stereotypical view Americans have of foreigners and Europe in general. Bratislava is represented as a town of secrets, full of maze-like backstreets, sinister locals and creepy child gangs and the notion that the whole town is complicit in the trap set for the unsuspecting backpackers is palpable.
Of course the gorefan may find all this a tad boring, impatient for the fun to begin and here also Roth doesn’t rush things. Initial scenes of torture are arguably more effective than the later ones because he doesn’t put everything in front of the camera, effectively employing both sound and lighting. The dimly lit corridors of the torture chambers contrast well with the brightly lit town, the characters descending almost literally into the depths of depravity and once there Roth ups the ante on the splatter front. It is at this juncture that the film starts to fall apart.
Once Roth reveals everything its as if he doesn’t know what to do and simply falls back onto the all to familiar conventions of the horror genre. Indeed, during the final 25 minutes or so the clichés can be anticipated and ticked off one by one. Although things take a more visceral turn the gore is never as shocking or disturbing as expected for an 18-certificate horror film. This is in part due to the fact that there is no one to root for, the backpackers not being the most likeable of individuals and without this emotional involvement the gore becomes simply spectacle and, apart from one standout moment, not very innovative spectacle at that.
The majority of classic horror films have, as well as chills and thrills, intelligent subtexts and the premise of Hostel seems ideal for this but there are none. The revenge driven finale could have led to some interesting examination of the relationship between the tortured and the torturer for example. But Roth seems content to get to the end as quickly as possible, or maybe he has simply run out of ideas? The cast don’t help, with only Jan Vlasák providing anything resembling a memorable performance.
For all Eli Roth’s protestations that Hostel is the final word in grueling horror the film is decidedly uninspired having none of the refreshing inventiveness of recent entries into the genre such as Saw and Wolf Creek. The inclusion of Takashi Miike in a cameo role, added to Roth’s revelation that he was influenced by the Asian horror phenomenum hints at what, in the right hands, this film could have been.
The hardcore horror fan fed on a diet of extreme Asian cinema will not find anything new here and the more casual cinemagoer will be turned off and this raises the question of who the film is aimed at. Regardless, despite its flaws, there are enough impressive directorial moments from Eli Roth to suggest that, with the right script, he could become a great horror director.
