You have to feel sorry for the good people at the Slovakia Tourism Board. Hot
on the heels of their country's appearance as Eastern European hellhole in the
recent EuroTrip comes Hostel, yet another bleak depiction of that
put-upon country. Those poor tourist officials just can’t get a break.
Hostel is the story of two fresh-faced American college buddies, Paxton
and Josh, who are getting a little exotic R&R in Europe before becoming
mired in careers. Along the way they meet Oli, a kooky Icelandic layabout, who
joins them for the ride. We hook up with the trio when they hit Amsterdam and
when, for Paxton and Josh, the whole ‘Europe thing’ is losing its luster. When
the guys hear about a crazy little place in Eastern Europe full of stunning
women who’ll jump at the chance to bed foreign men -- "especially Americans"--
the guys are on the first available train to the Slovakian capital.
But all is not what it seems. The trio arrives at the intended destination
alright, and at first things seem even better than they had hoped: Beautiful
women abound, saying porno movie lines, like "Hi boys! We're going to the spa...
You should come!" Before long though, the three find themselves bound to chairs
in a real-life torture chamber. The guys have fallen into a trap and find
themselves victims in an awful dungeon where patrons pay substantial sums to set
about them with a variety of medieval torture implements.
As the film is billed "Tarantino Presents," you might expect Hostel to
feature Mexican stand-offs, dialogues full of pop-culture references and Miss
Uma Thurman. But don't be fooled. This film is no more helmed by Tarantino than
the 1980s TV shows posthumously "presented" by Alfred Hitchcock were produced by
that master of suspense. On the other hand, if you get the idea that
writer-director Eli Roth's film is aimed at a certain male audience with a taste
for blood and guts, you are on the right track. Hostel is an efficient
gross-out horror flick. Its power comes from what you don't see -- not because
Roth doesn't show it all on screen, but because you’re too busy shielding your
eyes. Fifty per cent of this movie's budget must have been spent on fake blood.
Hostel is not for the faint of heart.
Slovakia (despite my belief this innocent wee country is continually insulted
by Hollywood) makes an excellent location, providing a beautiful backdrop of
lush meadows and quaint villages. But it also proffers grim, crumbling factories
and an abundance of shifty-looking henchmen in leather jackets. As in
Deliverance, the setting itself is as much tormentor to our protagonists
as the torturers who come after them physically. To anyone who has ambled
through an unfamiliar town in a faraway place with a paranoid sense of unease,
this movie will strike uncomfortably close to home.
Other locations might be less convincing. The story is supposed to start in
Amsterdam, but what we see on screen doesn't look anything like Amsterdam. And
the explanation for why Slovak girls go crazy for foreigners -- that there are
no men in Slovakia since the war -- hardly rings true either. There has been no
war in Slovakia since 1945. Perhaps Roth was thinking of Serbia? But this is
nitpicking. Hostel is an effective horror film, beautifully grim,
disgustingly entertaining.
