Movie Review: Hostel (2005)
You know, I get that a lot of horror movies start out the same way. A bunch of young people are having a good time before they stumble upon some horrible shit. It’s how Hatchet starts. It’s how every Friday the 13th starts. It’s how The Evil Dead starts. But those movies usually have a likable character or two thrown in there somewhere. This movie doesn’t have that.
There’s a fine line in writing characters for horror movies. I think it’s okay to have a couple that are downright unlikable, because we’re going to enjoy seeing them die. I think Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood does this really well with Dr. Crews and the bitchy girl, Melissa.
But they weren’t the main characters. We had people to root for in that movie.
In Hostel, there’s nobody. The three main characters all come off as annoying side characters in a trashy R-rated high school comedy. It’s like they’re characters out of Superbad, but without the heart.
The premise kind of depends on the characters here being horny assholes, too, which is unfortunate. They go to an unlisted hostel outside of Bratislava just to get laid. And they even leave Amsterdam to do it.
Does that seem strange and convoluted to anyone else?
Now I’ve been pretty hard on this movie already, so let me point out some good things. First off, the setting is nice. The idea of a couple of dumb Americans being out of their element is nice, even if it’s been done before, of course, with movies like An American Werewolf in London.
And the movie looks nice. I’m going to compare this to Saw of course, because they’re both sort of in the same vain. Saw, while it had more creativity and more of a sense of style, did look very cheap. Hostel looks much more professionally done, boasting a budget of nearly $5 million.
I also like that there is a little element of surrealism here, too. When Paxton (Jay Hernandez, Suicide Squad) comes back to his room and sees two naked women that weren’t the women who were there before, that’s kind of neat.
This is one of those horror movies that feels like it needs to reference other horror movies. I’ve seen movies do it a lot worse than this one, but the fact that the main characters are staying in room 237 is a bit on the nose. Maybe it would have been okay if it weren’t mentioned like five times.
But I do like Takashi Miike, director of Audition (aka the scariest, most disturbing movie ever), cast as a Japanese sadist.
The movie takes its time to get to anything graphic, but it is much more gruesome than the original Saw. There’s no real subtlety here; this is full-on torture porn.
It is genuinely disturbing, but it has some unintentionally funny moments, as well. Like when a guy with a chainsaw slips on blood from severed fingers and has the chainsaw fall on his thigh.
Overall, it’s watchable, but not particularly entertaining or interesting.
Rating: 4/10
