Thursday, August 26, 2010

Strong Enough for a man, but pH balanced for a woman

Hostel: Part II (2007)
Directed by Eli Roth, Screenplay by Eli Roth

Think of the first Hostel as a really long introduction to this film, which is in every way a superior piece. There are parts of Hostel Part II that show the loving care of a really beautiful art film. There are real characters here with genuine plot twists and I feel there's a genuinely intelligent thought-provoking exercise here. In pretty much every way Hostel II surpasses the first part, which in retrospect feels like an elaborate setup for the second part. As Roth himself notes, this Hostel was his attempt to make a giallo film and just to underscore that he even brought in guest appearances by several renowned Italian actors and directors.
Part II isn't just a sequel or a variation on a theme, it is a counterpoint to the first part that really extends the ideas to new ground. They are two films that have to be considered together as one story. This is a film that explores gender and class in a way that does credit to the horror genre as a whole. A lot of what could be said about the first Hostel might have been a stretch, but anything you say about this part is right on the money. It's not cheap exploitation, even though it does use quite a bit of cheap exploitation.

Right off the bat this film undermines everything we got out of the first part. We start by getting a sequence of Paxton (Jay Hernandez) making his escape on the train only to find himself in an Italian hospital where he is stabbed to death by an evil policeman played by Italian actor Luc Merenda, who came out of retirement just to do this one scene. (His translator is played by another great Italian, Susanna Bequer.) This scene highlights the global reach of Elite Hunting and how those who have the hound tattoo are forever linked in a shadowy way. But, this whole scene turns out to have been a paranoid delusion of Paxton, who wakes up in bed with Jordan Ladd. Granted, he's still missing the fingers he lost to that guy with the chainsaw, but things can't be that bad if he's got Jordan Ladd with him. But he is so paranoid that his girlfriend (who apparently took him back out of pity for his missing fingers and exotic story) is having second thoughts about him. And nobody has told Josh's family what happened to him. They still think he's backpacking around Europe. Of course, Paxton has reason to be paranoid and the only surprise when we see him dead at the kitchen table is just how gruesome it is to see a cat licking the stump where someone's head used to be. And this time, it's not a dream sequence. I love how it pretty much makes all of that time invested in seeing Paxton escape in the first movie seem like so much time wasted. He never really had a chance. And what I really like about this whole sequence is that it's a rare occasion of a horror film dealing with the consequences of the mayhem that occurs. The survivors (even if they aren't hunted down and killed) are always going to lug around the baggage (that is, if they don't have trouble lugging around the baggage on account of the missing fingers.) People will have questions about the people who are missing. Anyhow, this bit of prelude was more of a coda to the last film which culminates in a sharply dressed tough guy who gets a box delivered to him. (The box has Paxton's head in it.) The man, we will find out later, is Sasha (Milan Knazko, who was Slovakia's Minister of Culture from 1998-2002) and he's the man behind Elite Hunting. And behind every Eastern European oligarch who makes his money from people who like to kill other people is an adorable pair of hunting hounds. Seriously, the dogs are so cute.

Anyhow, now we meet our new trio of victims-to-be: three American girls taking a life-drawing class in Rome--Beth (Lauren German), Whitney (Bijou Phillips) and Lorna (Heather Matarazzo). Beth seems a bit serious (and maybe bi-curious?), Whitney is the party girl best friend and Lorna is a bookworm loner girl who probably writes in her journal about horses and rainbows and elf-maidens. First we get a bit of full frontal male art model nudity and then we get a topless girl. (It's all about evening out some of the gender odds in this film.) I have to briefly digress to mention that the art professor is played by the legendary Edwige Fenech who is still a stunningly beautiful woman and whose film work (especially in Italian comedies) deserves a serious look. Anyhow, the question is what kind of bait will get these girls to Slovakia? The answer is Axelle (Vera Jordanova). Axelle is in some way related to Alex the mole-face guy who lured the guys to Slovakia in the first film. Axelle's methodology is interesting, because after the girls are scared by some druggie hooligans on the train out of Rome she shows up to suggest that they can go relax in the hot springs spa that she likes in Slovakia. When Whitney pipes up as the dumb American wondering about the war there, it's Beth who steps up and says that the wars were in Bosnia. Thank you, Beth, for proving that some Americans do actually read and comprehend the news and things like books. The girls are lured by the idea of spending a nice relaxing weekend at a spa.

They show up at the old hostel and are greeted by the smiling goofy-ass desk clerk (Milda Havlas) who turns their attention to the harvest festival. Meanwhile he takes their passports and scans their pictures where they are immediately put up in an online auction. And this is where we get the other structural innovation of this film which is that it not only gives us a further glimpse into the operations of Elite Hunting but it also introduces us to a pair of Americans who show up to do some killing, so we get to watch the hunters and the hunted. It's seriously disconcerting to watch people going about their day while other people are getting on their blackberries to bid on a chance to murder someone. And it's also more than a bit upsetting to see how extremely normal (if obviously wealthy) the people doing the bidding are. These aren't supernatural stalkers or psychopaths with elaborate plans of revenge, they are ordinary people looking for an exotic travel experience--and that is infinitely scarier and more horrifying than a ghost story. (The fact that the villains we follow are also American pretty much overturns most of the expectations of xenophobia that were left from the first Hostel. Though, to be fair, even in the first film we got to see an American participant in the killing side.)

Todd (Richard Burgi) is treating his friend Stuart (Roger Bart) to a vacation in Slovakia complete with the opportunity to walk into a torture chamber and kill an attractive American girl. What are friends for? I think this is the logical conclusion to the fad of extreme sports, extreme vacations, extreme Thai hooker rafting expeditions etc.
Todd is a blustering coke-snorting ass who just can't find enough excitement to keep going and Stuart is a whipped man in a business suit who gets dragged along for all the rides that end in gonorrhea. The fact that both of these actors were on Desperate Housewives really adds a lot to their characters--a certain desperation to get the hell out of the cul-de-sac and do something else with their lives.

Meanwhile, the girls are having quite a time walking around the old town, getting spit on by the street urchins, and generally enjoying all the sights and sounds of central Europe. At the festival Whitney hooks up with a dubious looking guy named Miroslav (Stanislav Ianevski). You might recognize this guy as Victor Krum from the Harry Potter films. The degree of suspicion we are expected to have for this character is an interesting play on the xenophobic paranoia we got from the first film.
We also learn at the festival the important fact that Beth is a rich heiress. She is so rich, that she gives her father an allowance instead of the other way around. Beth has a creepy time at the festival as she is approached by a local who asks her to dance and when she refuses he says he "could have helped" her. Then the desk clerk shows up to ask Beth what the guy said to her and it's a credit to Beth that she is alert enough to lie to the desk clerk. Also, Stuart (who has arrived in town) shows up to get a closer look at the girl he's going to kill. Apparently Beth is a dead ringer for Stuart's emasculating wife.
Meanwhile, Whitney decides to get Lorna drunk because she thinks that Lorna is a stick in the mud. It turns out that Lorna is on some serious meds that react rather poorly to alchohol. While this doesn't lead to any medical consequences it does lead to Lorna making the bad decision to take a boat ride with a local guy.
Next thing she knows she's stark naked and hanging upside down from a chain in a torture chamber/bath. This is not exactly the spa treatment she was expecting.
Lorna's killing is the nastiest, most sexualized part of this film. Lorna's killer Mrs. Bathory (Monika Malacova) strips off and takes a scythe to Lorna so she can bathe in the girls fresh blood. Yes, this is a nasty piece of business but it is also a reference to the infamous "Blood Countess" Elizabeth Bathory who allegedly murdered young girls and bathed in virgins' blood to stay forever young. So, at least it's a literate reference, even if it's quite disturbing. The aesthetics of the blood bath, though, are quite good. There are some excellent scenic, lighting and effects choices here and because we are invested in Lorna the whole thing is quite disturbing.

The next morning Whitney gets snatched from the spa and Beth tries to make a run for it. Beth makes it all the way into the forest where she is confronted by the street kids. She is then rescued by Axelle, who shows up with Sasha. Sasha then makes the kids choose one from among them to die and the kids all gang up and push one of their own forward as a sacrifice for Sasha to shoot. Sasha is not to be screwed with.
Beth winds up at Sasha's villa, which has a pair of stone hunting hounds in front of the door and a full length portrait of Axelle on the staircase. Beth later spies a set of pictures including Axelle and a creepy guy from the train (as well as a group shot of Axelle, Alex, Natalya and Svetlana). Beth tries to make a second break for it when she realizes what Axelle and Sasha are up to, but she doesn't get anywhere.

Then there's the scene that is truly a work of art. It's a lengthy scene from the moment Stuart and Todd get the call that their girls are ready and follows them as they walk through the process and choose their implements of killing and torture and then enter the chamber. The sequence has no dialogue, is scored with a magnificent piece of music and has some of the most artful cinematography I've seen in a while. It really is a gem hidden in this film and is worth seeing on its own for those too squeamish to deal with the rest of the film.

Anyhow, the rest of the film is about how Todd and Stuart invert their characters. Todd is having a hilarious time threatening Whitney with a circular saw while Stuart is scared and almost weepy with Beth. Stuart and Beth decide to escape, but when Beth says something emasculating to Stuart that reminds him of his wife, he clocks her and ties her back up again. Todd has a funny sequence where the cord on the saw is too short and then when the cord is finally long enough he's playing around when he accidently puts the saw into Whitney's head and it gets caught on her hair and cuts her up nastily but doesn't kill her. This actually sickens Todd. (Turns out he wasn't as tough as he thought he was.) He tries to leave but the place has strict rules (and even stricter security in the wake of Paxton's escape--again, it's all about consequences). The staff unleash the dogs on Todd and he is cut to pieces. This prompts the staff to try to make lemonade by having a special limited-time offer to the customers for finishing off Whitney. This is where we get a cameo from Ruggero Deodato, the director of the infamous Cannibal Holocaust as...a cannibal who is enjoying a meal made of strips of flesh taken off of the still somewhat living Miroslav. When Stuart is shown the picture it cements his new attitude and he goes off to kill Whitney. We never see what he does and how he does it (again, this film is more restrained than its reputation) and when he comes back he looks like a different person, a harder, colder man.
But Beth won't give up. She lures Stuart with sex (trying to get him to sympathize with her because she's not his wife and can maybe make up for what his wife has done to him.) Stuart (like a lot of men) falls for it and Beth gets the drop on him. She proceeds to beat the crap out of him to get the code to the door. But the security system for the facility is now pretty airtight and they come through the door to find her holding a pistol in the direction of the door and a pair of shears to Stuart's genitals. It looks like it's curtains for the girl and Stuart says so. But, Beth is rich and Stuart has a mortgage and kids in expensive schools and this film is not so much about gender roles as it is about class and fiscal power. Stuart can't buy his way out of this situation, but Beth can and she does. All she has to do is to obey the rules of the facility--she has to kill someone and she has to get a tattoo. So, she cuts off Stuart's junk and tosses it to the dogs and walks over to get her tattoo and make the financial arrangements. Money is power. That's the ultimate lesson of this film. If you have the money then you can hold someone's life in your hands. Sure, there is coercive power and institutional power (like Elite Hunting's rules) but in the end what really empowers Beth and saves her compared to her friends is not so much a mystical character trait or a value (virginity, intelligence, humanity or anything of the sort) it is raw financial power and the intelligence to know that she can use it to bargain.

And once Beth is able to reassert he power she makes one final gesture by paying off the street kids to lure Axelle out into the forest where Beth decapitates her. The film ends with some happy European folk music while the little urchins play soccer with Axelle's head. It's the simple pleasures that are sometimes the best ones.

As gruesome as this film gets (and it is gruesome all along the way) it is also a great story with a real hard-edged cynical message at its core which is gratifyingly realistic. This film has a lot going for it and it is certainly better than the films it regularly gets lopped together with in the torture-porn subgenre. This film deserves better than that and I have to say that it made me respect Eli Roth as a storyteller.

On the other hand, it's kind of depressing to think that money can in fact buy your way out of all kinds of trouble. Them's that have it can even survive a horror movie torture chamber. Them's that don't--well, we've seen plenty of what happens to them's that don't.

On a sidenote, I have to mention that Inya, the woman who runs the operations at Elite Hunting in this film is played by Zuzana Geislerova who played the Reverend Mother in the film adaptation of Children of Dune.

Special Features

Previews
1. Coming to Blu-Ray
Look, it's Will Ferrell in high definition. Just what you've always wanted. Sure, floating cars would have been nice, but Will Ferrell in hi-def right in your own home? That's so much better.
2. 30 Days of Night
This is a pretty good trailer with very nice pacing and tone. And it's nice to go back and see uncharming vampires in action.
3. Boogeyman 2
Boogeyman 2: Electric Boogeymanaloo seems to be a cross between Nightmare on Elm Street and The Haunting.
4. Rise: Blood Hunter
Lucy Liu wants revenge for being turned into a vampire. In the sequel she gets revenge on her agent for getting her this role.
5. Resident Evil: Extinction
I'm beginning to get as annoyed by the Title-Colon-Subtitle style of titles as I am of numbered titles. Those Clint Eastwood orangutan movies didn't need numbers or colons and whatnot to get the point across that they were related.
6. Kaw
That's the sound that the evil birds make just before they pluck your eyes out for being tempted to see this movie.
7. Pumpkinhead 4: Blood Feud
I am so far out of the loop that I never even knew there was a first Pumpkinhead, much less that the whole thing had devolved into a retelling of the Hatfield/McCoy feud.
8. Fearnet.Com
For those people who want to take a break from playing Farmville.

Commentaries
1. Commentary with Eli Roth
Another pretty decent lesson in filmmaking with Eli Roth. Again he comes across as an intelligent filmmaker whose ideas are worth a listen.
2. Commentary with Eli Roth, Quentin Tarantino and Gabriel Roth
It's sometimes a bit tiring to listen to Quentin Tarantino watch a film but he does get the conversation rolling pretty well and Eli Roth and his brother Gabriel have a lot of good anecdotes to share and it's a good insight into the process and ideas behind this film.
3. Commentary with Eli Roth, Lauren German, Vera Jordanova and Richard Burgi
This track is still somewhat along the lines of the talk show format that was on Hostel I, but at least whenever someone is added to the commentary they stay on and converse with the next group. Richard Burgi and Lauren German are really great commentators and worth a chuckle or two.

Deleted Scenes
1. The Trash Man
This is a continuation of the scene after Jordan Ladd discovers Paxton's head and she is caught in the kitchen by a guy with a chainsaw. It does answer the question of what happens to Paxton's girlfriend.
2. Whitney's Sketch
"One of the main complaints I heard from female Hostel fans was that there was too much female nudity, which I never really saw as a problem. So I figured I'd start off the sequel with a lingering cock shot just to balance things out. Happy now?"
Jeez, Eli, you don't have to sound so angry and defensive about throwing in a lingering cock shot. I'm angry just having to know that the phrase "lingering cock shot" exists. Lingering cock shot. It's an addictive set of words. At any rate, Whitney's sketch is a closeup of the aforementioned cock (and, let's not forget the nutsack accessory that goes with it.) You have to admire Whitney's concentration of efforts.
3. Whitney's Rant
Whitney ranting about Lorna.
Her idea of a good time is like going to the museum or like taking a hot bath and masturbating to the Brothers Karamazov while listening to sadcore.
Replace the Dostoyevsky with Tolstory and I'd call that a great way to spend a Thursday night.
4. The Plants
Evil girls in the hostel watching Pulp Fiction. Gives away a little too much about just how big the evil operation is.
5. The Van
You should never take a ride from a bunch of Eastern Europeans in a van. Even these girls know better than that. Best line goes to Whitney: "My barf tastes cidery."
6. Rape Shower
Drunk girls making fun of the After School Special where a girl is in a shower and crying. A bit tacky. It does have an element of horror karma to it when the girls are put through something a lot worse. Rape Shower is probably the worst title for anything I've ever seen (and I'm including Lingering Cock Shot in this equation.)
7. The Tool Checkout Room
I like the shopping spree aspect of this scene and how it develops the characters of the would-be killers in their browsing of the instruments of torture, but the montage scene is such great cinema that I can't argue with the choice to cut this fun dialogue out.
8. The Changing Room
Nervous jokes as the guys get ready to get changed into the killing outfits.
9. "This Is It"
Another nervous moment before the guys go into their killing chambers. Again, the montage is so much better.
10. Nozdrovia
Beth has a drink with Sasha at the conclusion of their business. This is where Beth discovers that Sasha is related to Axelle. It ends with Beth being forced to get the tattoo, but the manhandling undercuts the monetary exchange which guarantees her safety and her release after she kills Stuart and we really don't need to know the precise relationship between Sasha and Axelle to know that it's close and the way the film stands you get a sense that once she's paid and killed Sasha and the rest of the Elite Hunting crew are downright friendly, and this scene sort of continues to give them menace when it's more interesting that they aren't menacing anymore when she's getting the tattoo without this scene.

Hostel Part II: The Next Level
A friendly behind the scenes look at the complete process of making the film. Again, I think these are useful not just as a means of learning about filmmaking but also as a way of demystifying the images of the film itself. There's something reassuring about watching actors in a make-up chair getting gore put on them.
The end of this piece does raise the question of the relationship of the behind the scenes documentary crew and the film crew itself given the number of angry glares tossed toward the camera.
The Art of KNB EFX
This feels almost like an extended advertisement/testimonial for KNB. They obviously do good work. They win bonus points for guiding you through the peocess of making the dog food/gelatin genitals that get tossed to the dog at the end of the film.
Production Design
This is a brief look at the construction of the sets for the train, the look of the village festival masks and the chamber of horrors, which is a more extensive facility this time around.
Hostel Part II: A Legacy of Torture
"Plato said it best when he said that the good dream about what the bad do." Dr. Sheldon Roth
This is an interesting beginning of a discussion about the ideas and social commentary in this film (including comments by Eli Roth's parents) and then it goes into a history of torture and representations of torture as well as an introduction to the Italian giallo legends involved in this film.
Blood & Guts Gag Reel
All horror films should include a blooper reel. It really helps take the edge off. And those dogs are just so cute.
"The Treatment" Radio Interview with Eli Roth and Elvis Mitchell
I like discussions of film, but Elvis Mitchell is no Terry Gross, He starts off by saying that this film is more personal and less social commentary than the first Hostel. Really? Still, it's nice to hear someone who can talk about film in a more thoughtful way than Access Hollywood or Entertainment Tonight.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Hostile

Hostel (2005)
Directed by Eli Roth, Screenplay by Eli Roth

I can't believe I'm going to defend Hostel because for the longest time I resisted seeing this film because of how I feel about the very idea of "torture porn" and because it didn't seem on face value to be much more than another misogynistic gorefest with the added bonus of xenophobia thrown in for some variety.
Curiosity, though, led me to stumble into seeing parts of Hostel, Part II and then later going back and seeing the first part to make sense of what I was seeing.
What I got was a gorefest with some misogyny and a large chunk of xenophobia thrown in. I also got a surprise, because somewhere in there was a well-made and thoughtful film. Granted, if you sit through a film once and then listen through four commentaries a certain Stockholm Syndrome (or Bratislava Syndrome) sets in. But at the very least Hostel is interesting enough to warrant some discussion and more arguments.
Somewhere in Hostel is a thought that equates paying for a person to provide pleasure (i.e. prostitution) with paying to cause pain to a person or, even, to kill a person.
And somewhere on top of that we who watch the fictionalization of these things are implicated in the business of pain entertainment.
The problem with Hostel is that it’s very difficult to critique a thing by showing the very same thing, which I suppose is the conundrum of attempting to introduce a peculiar kind of societal critique while reveling in gore. And this is the tension that animates Hostel--it exploits the desire to see sex and violence and explicit recreations of gore while it carries a criticism of the thing we're watching. Maybe the best explanation is that Eli Roth seems to want to express disgust with the idea that people would pay to torture and kill other people but considers the fictionalization of such things to be pretty cool and relatively harmless.

So here's the setup: three mooks are having adventures in Amsterdam. The two Americans are clearly doing a summer in Europe kind of thing and somewhere along the line they picked up an Icelandic Eurotrash guy to make things even wilder. Paxton (Jay Hernandez) seems to be the asshole of the bunch. Josh (Derek Richardson) is the nice guy who won't stop talking about his ex-girlfriend who cheated on him and dumped his sorry ass. And Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson) is the self-styled "King of the Swing" and instigator of mad activities. Our American ambassadors of freedom and hope (and Icelandic sidekick) are already bored with the hash bars and now they're looking for fun of the female variety. First they hit up the club scene, where Josh wears a fanny pack (containing all their important documents) thus preventing him and Paxton from getting laid. Oli, meanwhile has already texted pictures of himself having sex with a girl in the club's bathroom. This is the point at which I already don't care if Oli lives or dies because while I'm sure that the drunk girl (who knows, maybe she's sober) in the bathroom consented to get rear ended by an older Icelandic man in a cramped toilet I'm pretty sure she didn't expect to have that moment memorialized in a photograph to be shared with every backpacking foreigner in Europe.
The wonder boys then get kicked out of the club because Josh ends up in a fight with a long-haired Legolas lookalike. At this point the boys begin to use the adjective "Israeli" to describe how kickass they are. This is an adjective which I can only imagine is one more Lebanese fiasco from fading out of fashion the way that "French" and "menacing" were decoupled after Waterloo.

At any rate, now they really need to get Josh laid so they head to the famous Red Light District where they do some window shopping and then Oli pays for the three of them to have some fun. Josh and Oli double team a prostitute (in tasteless, but cinematically brilliant silhouette) while Josh wanders from room to room in the brothel. He hears some loud noises and, feeling chivalrous, opens a door into a bondage room where he is told that if he plans on staying he'd better be paying. The important lesson here is that if you're in a brothel and hear someone being whipped, just keep moving. Josh ends up in a room with a hooker with a heart of gold who talks to him fairly gently and then when she's looking the other way he just leaves. At this point I regained some sympathy for Oli who paid good money for a Dutch prostitute that Josh wasted without even offering to pay him back--or even admitting that he didn't do anything. So far, the film is pretty much a standard European student tourist adventure film.
But then our boys are locked out of their hostel because they've made it back past curfew which sparks a street battle with angry Dutch neighbors. Finally, they climb their way back in through the hostel window with the help of a friendly Slav named Alex (Lubomir Bukovy). Now, this is where things start going awry, because they come back to the hostel and there's a couple doing it in the back of the room while everyone else is casually conversing. This is the equivalent of wading in water nonchalantly while sharks bump into your leg. At a certain point in life you really have to make the choice to find somewhere else to be. Me, I'd go into another room. Alex, Josh and Paxton just sit and have a conversation. Oli sits on the bunkbed next to the copulating couple. None of these people is a reasonable human being.
Then Alex suggests that if our crew is looking for some gin-y then Barcelona is played out and where they should go is to Slovakia where he knows a hostel swimming in local women. To prove his point he pulls out his digital camera and shows off a bunch of pictures of himself having sex with some attractive women. This is the point at which I would have to say, "Thank you, mole-face (I forgot to mention that Alex has a distracting mole on his face) for your help in getting back in to the hostel but I have no desire to have sex with anyone who would go near you and your ugly mole." Instead, Alex spins a yarn about how Slovakia is aching for foreign penises since all their men were killed in the war. And this is the point at which whatever respect you might have had left for these men should disappear because none of them says "which war?" Not even the Icelandic dude. This would be the part where one might suggest that a summer spent backpacking across Europe will do nothing for increasing an American's knowledge about the world. (This bit is nicely counterpointed by a moment in Hostel Part II.)
Now, there are turning points in every life. And like I said, this is the part at which a reasonable person would look at Alex's picture, then look at his mole face, then look at Oli and the randy naked couple in the bunkbed and then calmly ask how he let things get this far and then, just as calmly, pick up a brick and bash his own head in.
But not Josh, Paxton and Oli. Nope, they're on the train for Bratislava where they meet a nice Dutch businessman (Jan Vlasak) who eats some meat covered salad with his hand and then proceeds to put his hand on Josh's leg prompting a quite understandable bit of homophobic hysteria. The Dutch guy and Oli show each other pictures of their daughters. This is when we learn that A) murderers have children that they love and B) Oli is way too old to be running around Europe with a bunch of American students. I have to say that this scene is one of the things to admire about this film because the Dutch guy later does some horrible things, and when we see that we have to remember that he has a family and he's not some sort of supernatural slasher lurking in the woods waiting to kill promiscuous teenagers. And that's the thing that makes this film that much more disgusting, because it's about ordinary folks who save up money to go and murder other ordinary folks.

Anyhow, the boys arrive in Slovakia to find the place a mixture of picturesque old architecture and decrepit abandoned industrial wasteland. But then they get to the hostel, which looks more like an abandoned chateau where the smiling idiot desk clerk (Milda Havlas) greets them with too much friendliness and then sends them up to their room which they discover that their roommates are a pair of hot women who invite them to the sauna. This is where you learn the most important life lesson of this film. If something seems too good to be true, then it is too good to be true. (The corollary to this is that the worst horror you can imagine is probably not as bad as the worst thing someone else is actually doing.) And while the whole atmosphere of the sauna seems to ooze friendliness and loose behavior, sane people should always have a puritanical streak in the back of their heads that should say, "yeah, but how much is this going to cost me?" I mean, it's all good and well to believe that people somewhere in the world are more comfortable sharing their sexuality freely, but still...you have to have a peculiarly American combination of naivete and arrogance to assume that you're going to roll into nowheresville and find the world's most attractive women throwing themselves at you.

Now, we're a good way into this movie and nobody has been killed and we haven't even caught a hint of violence. (Except for the bit where Oli shows off the face he's drawn on his buttcheeks--which did violence to my eyes.)
The boys head out to the bar with their super-friendly acquaintances Natalya (Barbara Nedeljakova) and Svetlana (Jana Kaderabkova). Oli hits it off with a girl from the hostel front desk, Vala (Jana Havlickova) and he shows everyone his swing dance moves, thus proving that his self-styled nickname actually was in fact an unimaginative and quite accurate description of his preferred method of dancing. But say what you will for Oli, at least you can believe that Vala would actually dig him in some way. I mean, you're working a crap job at a hostel in Slovakia and some Icelandic dude rolls in and can swing dance and is kind of funny (give or take) and also knows some old timey Russian tunes and has a decent singing voice. And while Paxton is an asshole, I have ceased to be surprised even in real life when a moderately attractive asshole manages to make time with an attractive woman. But the alarm bells should go out when Josh does everything he can to make sure he shouldn't be getting any and still doesn't repel his "date." He won't stop talking about his ex-girlfriend. He leaves the girl to go talk to the Dutch guy from the train and apologize for being such a homophobe and even puts his hand on the Dutch guy's knee. At this point there is no earthly way that any woman would be attracted to Josh. But Natalya and Svetlana are obviously bait--really attractive bait. There's a chilling moment during the subsequent encounter when Natalya and Svetlana just look at each other that tells you everything. Whatever pleasure they may or may not be getting is pointless. They're doing a job. Is it an exercise in misogyny to create a story where women are nothing more than bait? Maybe. But something to keep in mind is that we meet another pair of victims in the lobby of the hostel--two Asian girls. They certainly weren't lured in by the promise of desperate Natashas. I'd like to know how they ended up there. (Hostel Part II goes a long way toward explaining it.) At any rate, it shows a certain depth that it's not simply a matter of women luring men to this hostel. It's foreigners in general who are the problem.

So the dream night ends and when they wake up Oli is nowhere to be found and now the whole tone of the film moves into dark nightmare territory. Keep in mind, that at this point we're nearly halfway done with the film and still haven't seen an act of violence. Josh and Paxton go looking for Oli and end up in a museum of torture implements. Nothing bad actually happens there but they do see someone walking around in Oli's parka. Now they're creeped out. Kana (Jennifer Lim) shows the boys a texted picture of Oli and her friend Yuki (Keiko Seiko) which the guys find strange given Oli's expressed dislike of Asian girls. Paxton and Josh are freaking out and now the only thing missing is "People Are Strange" playing in the background to complete the picture. The first gruesome thing we get is a shot of Oli's detached head on a spike. And now we know what's up. The hunt is on and the quarry is on alert but still unaware of the scale of the threat.

And to make the whole place that much creepier we are treated to a bunch of little street kids demanding gum. Even the kids are menacing.

So it turns out the hostel was just a funnel to get young, relatively attractive people into the torture chambers where people pay good money (to Elite Hunting) to kill someone in elaborate ways at their own leisure. The glimpses we are shown are quite enough to establish the horror show going on there. Still, Roth leaves something to the imagination. Sure, he shows us a guy about to sever Yuki's toes, but instead of showing it he cuts over to Kana clipping her toenails. Despite the well-earned reputation for making explicit gore, Roth knows that sometimes the imagination fills in a horror show quite well enough.

Anyhow, just when you think that Josh is the most likely to survive, he disappears. Paxton is left running around town trying to track down Josh, who we next see in a torture chamber at the mercy of the Dutch guy from the train. The Dutch guy wanted to be surgeon, but he's got shaky hands so he's going to live out his dream by cutting open Josh. It's like Fantasy Island for sick sick people. Needless to say, it's too late for Josh. He's not going to make it out alive. Sorry kids, but sometimes nice guys do finish last.

Paxton, meanwhile, goes to the police who creep him out with their pointed lack of helpfulness. When he goes back to the hostel there are new girls who look like the old ones. When he finally tracks down Natalya and Svetlana they look like strung out heroin junkies--which makes sense given their day jobs. Natalya takes Paxton to the "Art Gallery" which is an abandoned warehouse/torture chamber. From here on out it's all about Paxton trying to escape, and in doing so revealing more and more about the operation of the place.

In a ludicrously violent scene Paxton loses several fingers to a guy with a chainsaw who then slips on some blood and cuts his own leg off and dies. This is how Paxton manages to escape. He hides for a while in a cart full of body parts that is taken to an incinerator by a hunchback. (You can't have an underground murder tourism operation without a helpful hunchback.) In the cart Paxton sees the remnants of Josh.

Takashi Miike, the Japanese director of films that would make you cringe, vomit and cringe again makes a cameo as a satisfied customer on his way home. (He is credited as playing himself, which I presume means that if there really was a place where you could pay to murder people Takashi Miike would pony up the yen to try it out?) And, just to reduce the xenophobic aspect of the situation, we meet another customer, a genuine American asshole with money. Paxton ends up shooting the guy. He also manages to rescue Kana, who unfortunately has had a blowtorch applied to her face and now has an eyeball dangling out which Paxton helpfully cuts off. This is by far the nastiest piece of work in the whole film. Now it's all about making good the escape. Paxton steals a car and heads into the city, where he sees Natalya, Svetlana and Alex the moleface standing in the middle of the street. He guns the car into them killing Svetlana and Alex instantly and when Natalya tries to get up she is finished off by the car that is chasing Paxton. As if this bit of revenge fantasy isn't enough Paxton then manages to find a bag of gum in the car which buys him the support of the street kids who proceed to ambush and stone the chase car, caving in the heads of the thugs with cobblestones and bricks in the process. Paxton and Kana make it all the way to the train station where Kana sees her reflection and jumps in front of a train. She does this, presumably, because she doesn't consider life worth living if she looks like that (and only has one eye, to boot). The question is: does she do this out of shock? Or is it an indication of the value she as a person places on her appearance? It's easy enough for Paxton to be shocked because his missing fingers will presumably not destroy his life.

At any rate, Paxton makes it onto the train and gets out of Slovakia only to see the Dutch guy in a train station further down the line. He follows the guy into the bathroom and proceeds to give him a swirly and cut his throat.

So, for all the legendary torture and blood in this film it was for the most part a long story about exploitation (wrapped in an exploitative package) which turns into an action escape story at the end with a big dose of revenge thrown in. While the gross parts are very gross they are put into some serious context (where all of the violence has lasting consequences) the overall effect was of a good ghastly story. It certainly wasn't the useless gratuitous film I was expecting to see. For those who think that any representation of violence breeds more violence, then maybe the problem is that making a good film where such violence is necessary to the story only opens the floodgates for more violence and constant escalation. The thing is, that while you can see that the filmmakers had fun creating the physical representations of the violence, you also have to admit that it's layered into a pretty thoughtful bit of storytelling. If every film like this was this well done then maybe this subgenre would be better. As it is, Hostel stands out as being a good film in a bad genre. As for those people who would watch such a film and really enjoy the gore and the torture--well, it's like trying to pin the blame for alcoholism down. Sure, without distillers there'd be no alcohol, but there'd still be people looking to get drunk out there. I don't enjoy torture porn, but I'm reassured by my distaste for and disgust at it. On the other hand, I can't deny that this is a good story. The contradiction there is something to think about.

Bonus Features

Commentaries
You have to be a serious cinephile to sit through 4 commentaries on any film, even if you really love it. I have to admire Eli Roth's dedication to his craft and the seriousness with which he takes his films that he bothers to put so much effort into explaining his films in so many commentaries. I know there is a school of thought that says that no film should require so much explaining--you either do it in the film or you don't. But I suppose there's something to be said for footnotes and scholia and commentary and frankly I am impressed with Roth's commentaries so I feel like I should make special mention of them as being integral to the appreciation of this film.

1. Eli Roth with Executive Producers Quentin Tarantino, Boaz Yakin and Scott Spiegel
In this commentary Roth explains how after the success of Cabin Fever he was at a career crossroads where he wasn't sure if he wanted to be known solely for horror films, but ultimately decided that he was okay with that to some extent because he wanted to make films he would like to see and that if that meant the industry would pigeon-hole him as "that guy" then so be it. Thus came Hostel, which Tarantino thought was Roth's opportunity to make his Miike film. I'm not sure why anybody would need to make their own Miike film, but there you have it. This commentary solidified my feelings about Quentin Tarantino (he comes off as more than a bit of an ass, personally, with somewhat distasteful appetites, but he does know a lot about films and he is quite supportive of Roth, which is very generous on his part). Roth comes off as intelligent and earnest. All in all, this is an interesting round-table on the ideas contained in the film and the origin of the project itself. It's not a bad crew to have doing commentary on other people's films, frankly.
2. Eli Roth with Barbara Nedeljakova, Eythor Gudjonsson, Editor George Folsey Jr. and Web Author Harry Knowles
Okay, this is one of those annoying talk-show style commentaries where the guests keep rotating out and Eli Roth is the host. While this gives people a chance to talk about their experiences without so much interruption as you get in a mass group commentary it ends up being disconnected from the film itself and you lose the sense of watching the film with the people doing the commentary. This is especially true with Harry Knowles who has a phone conversation with Eli Roth in this commentary. What is this, a call-in show? Important knowledge gleaned here: sniper (pronounced sneepur) is Icelandic for clitoris. Harry Knowles is brought in as a thank you for being so instrumental in creating the buzz around Cabin Fever. So if you hate Eli Roth movies you can blame Harry Knowles. This does raise the question of just how much power in shaping taste is vested in a few people like Harry Knowles who can control the bully pulpit in favor or against a given thing. At any rate, if you're going to do a talk-show commentary you should at least observe some of the forms by having an opening monologue and musical guests.
3. Eli Roth, Producer Chris Briggs & Documentarian Gabriel Roth
A pretty decent commentary. I like that Eli Roth gets his whole family involved. We learn a lot about the goings on in Central Europe and we get a sense of just how constrictive it is making a film of any size in the US with the production unions--which nearly crippled Cabin Fever. Thus, a lot of Hostel was determined by Roth wanting to make a film outside of the US and away from those pesky unions.
4. Director Commentary w/Eli Roth
This commentary is especially useful for filmmakers. It's essentially a continuation of Roth's Cabin Fever director solo commentary (which was Eli Roth's Guide to Filmmaking 101.) You can think of this one as Eli Roth's Guide to Filmmaking 102. Personally, I'm enjoying taking the Eli Roth Film Tele-course.

Hostel Dissected: Part 1
Pre-Production
There are some great shots of Prague here. (And look, the Gastrocentrum is catered by Aramark.) I don't know which I like more, the shots of Prague or the backstage shots of the effects which help demystify the violence. This is a very detailed and instructive look into the making of the film. Cesky Krumlov is a fantastic town.
Part 2
The production itself. Again, it's really great to see how the effects gags work. And we get to see Eli Roth's parents on the set. Also, there are porn stars.
Part 3
More production fun and the alternate ending and then the post-production fun begins.
Combined with the commentaries, Hostel Dissected is a great primer on the making of a film.

Kill the Car! (Multi-Angle)
By far the coolest of the special features, it allows you to use the "angle" button on your remote to cycle through 3 different camera angles of the scene where the street kids destroy the car. This can provide for hours of endless fun for the whole family.

Previews
1. When a Stranger Calls
When the stranger calls ask him to see this movie and then let me know how it was.
2. Silent Hill
If I drove into an abandoned mining town and found a copy of this movie lying around in an abandoned Woolworths then maybe I'll see it.
3. Underworld: Evolution
You can't get enough Kate Beckinsale. This is literally true.
4. The Cave
Based on the story by Plato, this film was part of the onslaught of evil cave movies from a few years back.
5. The Exorcism of Emily Rose
You'd hardly know that actually this is a courtroom drama. That scene in the classroom where everyone's face turns evil gets me every time.
6. Boogeyman
I sometimes get the suspicion that this film might have some signigicant insight into the idea of unresolved issues from childhood, but I just can't bring myself to pick up a copy of a movie called Boogeyman and watch it.
7. Ring Around the Rosie
Why is it that the mirror gag always works in horror films? I'm almost curious enough to see this one to find out what it's all about, but I have the same issue with making the effort that I have with Boogeyman.
8. The Fog
Maybe that remake of The Fog wasn't as lame as I remembered it, but then again maybe it was.