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Hostel (2005)

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1454 comments in total

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421 out of 699 people found the following comment useful :-
Moral Choices and the Dark Side of Humanity, 20 December 2005

Author: BigMez from United States

I just got back from an L.A. screening of Hostel. I haven't seen an effective horror film like this in a long time. My stomach was still knotted up after we left the screening. The last time I felt like that was when I saw ALIENS for the first time about 19 years ago. Since then, no other horror film has ever made me feel like that. I certainly didn't expect it from this one. As much as I loved Cabin Fever, I'm not blind to the shortcomings of its script. As such,I was expecting more of the same from Hostel - dark humor, gore, and a sense of dread. I'm happy to see that director Eli Roth has taken a big step forward in becoming a better storyteller and filmmaker.

Admittedly my heart sank when the film began. The scenes introducing the main characters were blandly shot and edited. All I could think was, 'Oh no. Roth succumbed to some unseen studio pressure to make a normal-looking horror flick'. The style was typical of the what you'd see in crap like I know what you did last summer. But in very subtle ways, the blandness gets washed away and as our heroes enter the threshold of Hell, the style of the film changes as well. This, I learned during the Q&A afterwards with Roth, was intentional.

If you've read some of the other reviews posted here from people who saw it at the Toronto Film Festival, you get the general idea of the story. Contrary to what you might've heard, this is not a 90 minute film on torture. The torture scenes are brief and to the point. Roth doesn't wallow in pointless gore. And this is where I think it shows how he's improved as a filmmaker. He's more interested in scenes and ideas that move the story forward. Yes, there is plenty of gore, but it's relevant to the story and doesn't exist just for it's own sake.

One of the aspects of this film that made it so powerful was how Roth created a sense of helpless and inevitability. He provides the dark setup, throws in a sympathetic character, and begins twisting the screws and ratcheting up the suspense. This isn't a movie where you turn off your brain to enjoy it. On the contrary. The more you think about it, the more horrifying it becomes. You begin putting yourself into the character's situation and wondering what you'd do. When you realize that there is no hope for the character, no way to escape, no 'buddy' who's gonna turn up at the last minute to save the hero, and not a shred of humanity or compassion to the antagonists, real fear begins to set in.

Another great element in the script is how the 'survivor' makes moral choices that define their character. Instead of being merely reactive like the characters in Cabin Fever, the survivor makes several decisions which change the course of the story. It's a sign of well thought-out script and a filmmaker who cares about the fate of his characters.

For horror fans, this is an absolute must-see. It's so refreshing to see a horror movie that actually makes you feel uncomfortable and one in which you have no idea what's going to happen next. As for the gore, I was surprised by what they got away with. Although there were no credits at the end of the film, the cut I saw was rated R by the MPAA and according to Roth, he didn't cut anything out.

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253 out of 378 people found the following comment useful :-
bad things happen to bad people, 7 January 2006

Author: ufemizm from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I saw Hostel tonight with a crowd that was very receptive to the experience. Mine was more hostile. The film opens like a teen sex comedy. We are meant to identify with three young guys, who's idea of fun is getting high and having sex with prostitutes. This first section is littered with naked women, in what might just be the least sexy presentation of naked women anywhere. One can sense director Eli Roth and his cronies giving each other high fives off-camera, much like the silhouetted threesome early on in the film, as they pay surgically enhanced women to take their clothes off.

The three men find themselves in Slovakia, and in what is referred to as an art show or an exhibit. Rich men have paid Russian gangsters to torture and ultimately murder a human being, our heroes? subjects? One by one, the men are tortured and killed in escalating graphic manners. The final man escapes, is involved in a car chase, and ultimately becomes what he was trying to escape.

This is, at its black heart, a very dumb movie. Probably, the most clever thing in the film, is the very weak parallel drawn between the legalized red light district in Amsterdam, and the illicit torture rooms in Slovakia. Everything else is just baloney. We don't really care about the three men, so the tortures that they endure aren't really effective at eliciting any sympathy, it's more that we're glad it's not happening to us. The motivations for the men that torture is never made clear, it's more a general sociopathic disconnect that's vaguely hinted at. It's also worthwhile noting that the one character that seems to be gay is singled out as the worst of the torturers, further contributing to the filmic stereotype of homosexual as homicidal.

One should also note the historical context of the film. This is an American movie, about torturing people, made at a time when America, right or wrong, is receiving flak for torturing prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere, and makes no mention of the current world situation.

It's also worth noting that the audience I watched this picture with cheered and applauded at each new horror. It all seemed so Circus Maximus.

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189 out of 277 people found the following comment useful :-
Unrealistic and not scary., 6 January 2006

Author: requiem2872 from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I didn't like Hostel. The premise is frightening. The idea of being drugged, kidnapped, tortured, and killed by people who are paying to do it, is a great concept for a film. It's just too bad that the movie couldn't decide what it wanted to be.

It starts off like "Eurotrip" or any number of cheesy teen sex comedies. Lots of fake boobs and characters acting idiotic, in a fake atmosphere. Scenes in dance clubs that don't look realistic. You know, the types of places where people are dancing to loud music, but somehow can talk to each other in a normal tone of voice and everything is brightly lit so you can see all the movie extras pretending to dance in the background. Just like all the clubs, I've ever been to, right? Anyway, this goes on and on until the bloodshed starts, giving us absolutely no reason to feel anything for the main characters.

Then it turns into the horror film it should be. The scenes of torture are effective and psychologically scary if you imagine yourself in the situation, but in the context of the rest of this movie it just becomes ineffective.

Then the end of the movie turns into an unrealistic revenge fantasy that's played out, for the most part, for laughs. Kids payed in bubble gum help the good guy get away by smashing the bad guys heads in with rocks as they chew away and blow bubbles. The two girls and guy who set them up are easily killed when they luckily appear in front of the getaway car. The man that killed his friends just happens to be on the train on the way home so he can kill him and somehow not get blood on himself, then continue on his way. So is the movie supposed to be realistic, scary, or funny? It's falls short of any of these things. Eli Roth needs to pick one and do it.

The music is terrible. Not in the fact that the music itself isn't good, but for the fact that, A: it doesn't fit the movie, and B: There's way to much of it. There's a scene where the Characters are merely walking across a courtyard, and the music sounds like it should be a fight scene in Harry Potter. Completely out of place and distracting, further telling you this is just a movie no need to feel anything for the characters or get scared.

You can do a good compare and contrast between this movie and "Wolf Creek" which came out a couple weeks ago. Everything that is wrong with "Hostel", was done right in "Wolf Creek". Both movies are about young travelers getting into horrifying situations, however in "Wolf Creek" the characters actually act like normal human beings therefore you feel disgusted when they get tortured and killed. It's genuinely frightening and realistic, and by all means not "fun" to watch. It makes you feel horrible inside. It's REALISTIC HORROR. To make a stupid analogy. If "Hostel" and "Wolf Creek" were movies about Viet Nam, "Wolf Creek" would be "Platoon", and "Hostel" would be "Rambo: First Blood Part Two". (Note how neither would be "Full Metal Jacket" cause it's to good to be used in this analogy).

I gave "Hostel" a 3 out of 10 for a frightening concept, and the puke was a nice touch. . . If you're about to get tortured and killed chances are you're gonna puke. . . Realism, Eli. More realism please.

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191 out of 292 people found the following comment useful :-
Somewhat stylish, but very trite and predictable!, 6 March 2006

Author: ralph_2ndedition from Sweden

The plot, in short: Three backpackers, two Americans and one Icelander, does Europe by train with two major goals: To get high and nail as many women as possible... In Amsterdam they accidentally learn of a hostel in Bratislava, Slovakia where sex-mad women thirst for men in general, and American men i particular. They of course decide to go there and at first it seems the rumors were true. But they soon learn that the hostel is nothing more than a front for a bizarre club, where people can pay a huge fee to get to perform unspeakable acts...

My 2 cents: The director and writer Eli Roths biggest accomplishment before Hostel is Cabin Fever (2002) - weather or not that is something good is a matter of personal judgment. That he got two Evil Dead'ers (Scott Spiegel and FX-genius Gregory Nicotero) interested in his script is not at all surprising. But how he got Quentin Tarantino to executive produce (and thereby act as "posterboy" for his flick) is, to me, a total and utter mystery.

Hostel has potential, I'm not going to take that away from it. The thought that a place exists where rich people pay money to torture and kill other people is interesting. And a story about a kidnapped person who finds himself locked in that very place, waiting for his assassin, should make for a great film! The film is wonderfully lit, specifically in the torture chamber-scenes. And the set-dressing in those scenes are marvelous. It really feels like Roth found these places - and just shot them as the were. But the lighting, set-dressing and potentially-rich story, unfortunately, ends the positive things I have to say about Hostel.

It is frustrating to see a story that could have been so exciting and horrific get so utterly fumbled up! The movie is an hour and a half long, and takes a whopping 50 minutes to get to the place that is supposed to be the scene of terror and creepiness. The nearly hour-long "intro" is spent observing the backpackers while they party, get high and watch naked ladies in Amsterdams Red Light-district. When the story finally starts to focus on whatever is wrong with the Slovakian hostel it points everything out to such an extensive degree that it feels like Roth wants to put a stupid-hat on every member in the audience. I sat, in vain, and waited for him to take the lid off, go "ta-daa!" and show me something intelligent that I had missed. But it never happens and when the lid, towards the end, slowly slides off on its own accord it turns out that the ones you suspected were bad guys were in fact...bad guys. The ones you suspected were dead...were dead. And the entire movie ends the way you suspected it would all along.

Jay Hernandez (Paxton) and Derek Richardson (Josh) doesn't do to shabby in the two leads. But Roth has stayed true to Hollywood formula and chosen picturesque before personality, and the bigger part has unfortunately been given to Hernandez - instead of Richardson who I thought were more likable, and more interesting to watch.

Spanish director Koldo Serra made El tren de la bruja in 2003. A short-film about a man who agrees to partake in an experiment and suddenly finds himself strapped to a chair in a dark room. He hears metal objects being handled and someone pacing back and forth in the room. When the light is turned on it dawns on him that he will probably be tortured to death. Serras short-film is fifteen minutes long. It was filmed in two days and is scary as hell! Hostel is both longer and has, as it first seems, more story to build on. But it still wants to base the horror in exactly the same sort of scenes as Serras short - and fails miserably! Hostel is, probably, made specifically for an American teen-audience, where drugs and naked women represent half of the movies pull. Blood and bodyparts make up the other half. If you watch this and expect anything more sophisticated than some blood and naked breasts you'll be disappointed.

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288 out of 522 people found the following comment useful :-
Good horror, non-existent story, 20 December 2005

Author: Todd Koerner from Hermosa Beach, CA - United States

I like a rip-roaring horror movie as much as the next guy, but this one just didn't do it for me. It certainly felt like it hit all the necessary marks, from nudity and dismemberment to bloody revenge, but at the conclusion, it just felt like eating cotton candy - no real nutritional value, just a sense that I had satisfied some of my prurient appetite without any logical payoff.

The movie was slow in getting started and then the sprinted to a singularly boggling ending. I walked out of the theater asking, "What was the point of all that?" And while this is described as horror, it really should be classified as thriller. There was no explanation or clever twist at the end. Just the end. I'm sure that it will attract an enthusiastic audience of young adults, but the evisceration by the critics will stem any hopes of huge box office.

If your expectations are low enough, and your tastes in gore sufficiently robust, then you are in for a good time. Otherwise, skip this and see a classic Hitchcock film. You'll feel better about yourself.

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110 out of 173 people found the following comment useful :-
Good idea...turned to generic garbage., 15 April 2006

Author: imajestr from United States

This movie really could have been so much more. The idea would have been much better off with someone who actually wanted to make a decent movie, instead of a porno gorefest. The first half of the movie consists almost entirely of sex, talk of sex, drugs, and talk of drugs. Instead of, hey, maybe develop the characters a little so the audience might care about them and make their plights a little more tense, the filmmakers decided to have a lot of party scenes and annoying main characters acting like idiots until, uh oh, we didn't plan on being tortured, oops! The sad thing is, there are hints of something more intelligent beneath the surface, but the surface is piled so high with garbage that it's lost. For example, while at a sex club (wow, original!) one of the characters mentions something along the lines of "paying to do anything you want to a person," of course he means sexually, but we know the basic plot of the movie involves the same concept with death and torture instead of sex. One of the characters is supposed to seem like a nice guy, but still never really develops enough for us to care. The main character has absolutely no depth other than a childhood story and his shallow interaction with his friend. The last half or so of the movie actually starts to gain momentum, and the first half not been an entire waste of film, I could have walked away with more than a feeling that I'd just watched 15 minutes of an okay movie, and an hour and fifteen minutes of porn and senseless gore. Sadly enough, the idea of this movie was put into the wrong hands. A little less than halfway through, my friend turned to me and said, "Maybe I picked up the wrong movie..." to which I replied, "Yeah, I think you got Eurotrip by accident." I am baffled as to why they decided to write the first half like they did. I guess I was hoping for something deeper. Don't watch this expecting anything special, be ready for lots of nudity and lots of incredibly disturbing gore mixed randomly, the two not even seeming to fit like they would in a slasher flick.

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128 out of 209 people found the following comment useful :-
Horrendous, with emphasis on the 'horror', 6 January 2006

Author: betterthanliz from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I'm not sure if this is a spoiler, so I figured I should do that to be safe.

First of all, I didn't see this movie voluntarily. That being said, it was even stupider than I expected. Probably the worst thing I have ever seen or could even contemplate seeing. The characters were lame(I couldn't bring myself to feel any sympathy for them), the story line sucked(mostly because the story was "see porn! meet creepy people! see more porn! watch people get their limbs hacked off by psychopaths for fun! escape! REVENGE REVENGE REVENGE!!"), the gore was over-the-top and completely sickening. I alternated between wanting to throw up and just wanting to cry, not because it was sad, or you felt extremely sorry for these poor people who were being mutilated to the tune of $25,000, but because I couldn't imagine any sane, semi-rational human being enjoying this movie.

I want my $7.50 back. And the hour and a half i spent with my hands over my ears waiting for it to be over.

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128 out of 215 people found the following comment useful :-
Pornography + Poor Plot = Hostel, 10 January 2006

Author: nathan-moeller from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

The only reason I bothered to see this movie was the fact that my friends and I wound up at the wrong movie theater. I went in undemanding and not expecting a very good movie, yet still wanting to be satisfied for the night. What I got was my worst movie experience to date. The movie contains no deep plot or huge twist that requires use of the mind throughout the film. The strong sexuality and nudity throughout the first half of the movie was pointless and didn't add to the story at all. The torture scenes are well done but it seems Tarantino wanted nothing more from this movie other than to make his audiences sick to their stomachs.

The "villain," if he can be called that, is revealed about halfway through the movie and delivers an unimpressive speech that doesn't surprise you or make you see where he's coming from with his reasoning.

Shortly after Josh's torturing, I got up and left, sick to my stomach and unimpressed. If you want a movie that will make you horny for the first half and sick the next, Hostel is the flick for you. Otherwise, it is nothing but a substantial waste of time and money.

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77 out of 122 people found the following comment useful :-
Hostility for "Hostel", 8 January 2006

Author: Viperchris1 from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This movie was not only laughable, but morally degrading and at some parts repulsive to watch. The only reason that I went to see this movie is because I respect Quentin Tarantino's work in other movies, and just because his name was on this one, I caved. Some of the scenes were so STUPID that I found myself laughing at the screen. One scene containing bloody floor and a chainsaw to a leg was purely comical. Another scene where a one-eyed Asian girl jumps in front of a train after viewing her deformed face had me crying. The large amounts of nudity were also not needed and only added to the lack of morality in this film. I would not see this movie ever again and I would encourage others to do the same.

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43 out of 63 people found the following comment useful :-
Serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever., 9 July 2006

Author: Charlotte Kaye from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

It's not funny. It's not stylish. Nor is it suspenseful, exciting, thrilling or chilling in any way. It's not intelligent enough to even be viewed as some warped social commentary and it's not ambitious enough to do anything other than present gratuitous T&A and gore in the dullest manner imaginable. Hell, it's not even entertaining. What it really is an exercise in being completely and utterly pointless aside from presenting violent scenarios and nude women with in third world countries with unlikely silicone enhanced bodies. Oh yeah, the plot involves a trio of students (two Americans and a foreigner) vacationing in Eastern Europe who eventually stumble upon a pay-to-slay type business that specializes in making your sickest dreams come true (i.e. customers pay a high price to get to slaughter a real live person). And I am using the world "eventually" because it takes around an hour for this movie to get to the real horror content. First we have to sit through an excruciating hour dedicated to the juvenile frat boy antics of characters who stay wasted on booze and drugs and pay hookers for sex. A whole hour of this crap.

Our "heroes" are stupid, irritating, immature, one-dimensional, unlikable and by the time their lives are in danger, you could care less what happens to them. I know I didn't. I was actually rooting for the generic, anonymous bad guys to tell you the truth. To make matters worse, this film has a tacked on ending that tries to let the sole survivor enact his vengeance. These scenes are absolutely ludicrous and riddled with coincidence that certain characters just happen to be at a certain place at the right time. Hey, there's three of them now crossing the street right in front of me just as I'm trying to escape the town! Well what do you know? How bout I run 'em all over! There's another one who happens to be on the same train as me as I'm leaving the country! Well I'll follow him into the bathroom... etc. etc. etc. The end.

This movie is absolute garbage from start to finish. It's nothing new or interesting. There is some gore, but it's pretty much what's expected and nothing too shocking for anyone who has already sat through films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Dawn of the Dead. Director Eli Roth may be 35 years old, but his brain functions at the level of someone 20 years his junior based on his juvenile screenplay and uninspired direction. Roth himself later claimed to make this film "to show Americans' ignorance of the world around them" and in the process only shows his own ignorance when it comes to film-making. Absolutelty the pits!

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