You’ve probably heard of the movie “Hostel“.
According to some IMDB users, it’s the most gory and the most scary film in the world, ever. Apparently, in some theatres, members of the audience were so scared and shocked they left the theatre and hid in the toilets and had to be coaxed out by sweet-natured staff.
Bunch of crap. I can only deduce that the majority of the IMDB comments that don’t end with “This sucks, avoid” are written by Eli Roth and / or members of the Hostel marketing team. It’s as scary as a visit to the dentist. When you’re the dentist.
Now this blog entry contains spoilers. But the whole movie is spoiled by being rubbish, so I wouldn’t worry.
My biggest problem with this film is that it’s not really a horror. The “scary-gory” scenes probably last around 12 minutes. The other 83 minutes are filled with soft-core porn. I’m really not joking. It’s porn. Outright porn. It breasts scare you, then you’ll be terrified as they’re everywhere. In mirrors, on women, in saunas, everywhere. In-fact there are so many breasts, it plays like a show-reel for a narcissistic plastic surgeon who specializes in breast augmentation.
The other problem is the plot. There isn’t one. Most slasher movies won’t trouble anyone above the age of five for complexity, but “Hostel” didn’t bother with the plot. Eli was probably too busy interviewing semi-naked women to worry about the plot. The premise of the movie is scarily like Eurotrip. Three young men, two of whom are American college students circa 18 years old (actors age, 35) and an Icelandic fellow are backpacking their way through Europe (”ya-ya, good drugs, no? Haha, ya.”) in an attempt to sleep with as many women as they can without catching a blinding or burning sexually transmitted disease. That’s it. Three horny men in Europe after “European women”. They’ll do anything to continue their hedonistic adventures. In fact, on the say-so of a random European stoner (”Ah yes, go to a hostel in Bratislava, they love American men there. They will sleep with you, no problem”) they travel to the lawless, war torn end of Eastern Europe.
Our heros (who are so annoying, half the audience are wishing they’d just get tortured and get it over and done with) travel to Bratislava. Or at least the strange stereotype that most American movies portray to be Bratislava. Shelled out buildings, gangs of children, small old cars (Ladas, Skodas, etc), toothless men, etc, etc. On the train, they meet a strange old man who chillingly tells them that “with the right money, you can do anything in Bratislava”. I bet we’ll see him again.
We’re about 25 minutes into the film, so settle down for about 40 minutes of porn. The premise is that in Bratislava, a business called “Elite Hunting” uses “beautiful” women to entrap young men who are carted off downtown. They are chained to chairs and paying customers can then torture them and, if they fancy it, kill them.
In a sequence of scenes we see our heros seduced “Ooh, look at my lovely boob-job in the mirror as I dress” and “Ooh, watch my bum eat my thong as I wiggle away”. One by one they’re carted off downtown and tortured in the movie’s raison d’être which is basically a dark, dirty gloomy room with a chair and various torture tools (scissors, chain-saw, drill, etc). If you’ve seen “Saw”, then you’ll get the basic visual effect. These “torture” scenes last about 40 seconds and are so dark that you think you have myopia.
The last guy to get carted off does so after tracking down one of the “beautiful European” women and demanding to be taken to his friends. They do, he ends up chained up in a chair. A German Josef Mengele look-alike has a bash and chain-sawing our heros fingers off. He does. He comically slips on them and falls on the floor. Our hero wiggles out of his chair and manages to chain-saw up Mengele. It sounds worse than it is. It’s basically two gallons of tomato sauce and a prosthetic arm.
He escapes, he hears a scream, he goes back and saves a girl (missing eye, burnt face) who, through sheer gratitude lobs herself in-front of a train.
And that’s about it.
Here’s how to recreate the “Hostel” experience. Watch the Amsterdam scenes from “Eurotrip”. Then watch 40 minutes of porn, then watch the last 10 minutes of “Saw” and you’re done.
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