Hostel (2005 film)

Category: Gore horror/comedy

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It's gory, it's sexually explicit in parts, it's full of bad language, it's in bad taste, but most of all, Eli Roth's Hostel is stupid fun!

The long and short of Hostel is that three tourists are backpacking through Europe to try fulfil their hedonistic desires when they are told of a hostel in Bratislava, Slovakia, where they can fulfil their wildest dreams. Unbeknownst to the three, almost everyone in and around the hostel are part of a secret group that traps tourists, takes them deep into an abandoned building and allows rich clients to kill them for a fee.

While Josh and Oli are taken and killed, Paxton, through some dumb (and sometimes hilarious) luck, manages to survive his kidnapping and attempted murder to eventually extract revenge against those who got him in that situation in the first place. That's essentially the plot - it's not incredibly deep.

But despite the premise and the gore visible on screen, it's really not a film that is meant to be taken too seriously - something I wish I understood that back in 2006 because I was one of those people who saw this movie as the decay of society. 

Looking past the outrage, you'll see there is a lot of humour in this movie - in the way people talk, in the way people behave, in the manner of deaths. It's like Eli Roth decided to make the stupidest and most outrageous film he could about a crude and gross subject. For example, the scene where Paxton is in the changing room, suspicious he's about to be sprung when he is suddenly accosted by a stereotypically bombastic American who goes into exaggerated detail about having so much sex he doesn't care, but wants to know how to kill someone. It's so crude and unbelievable that you simply have to laugh! 

Or the scene were Paxton finally discovers the horror of what is going on and cusses out Natalya by calling her a bitch - to which she replies "I'm getting paid a lot of money - that makes you MY bitch!".

And this goes to the skill of Eli Roth and Quentin Tarantino as filmmakers in that they're able to take a degrading and dehumanising concept and almost (and I mean almost) turn it into a comedy!

The other thing to note is that the physical effects are REALLY well done! The drill scene and the eye-cutting scene are hilariously gross. I certainly hope the special effects crew got paid well!

But there is one question I need answered - how in the world does Paxton know how to speak German?

FINAL RATING: 4/5 STARS