THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
When you go on vacation, you try to avoid being a buzzkill by not thinking of the worst. That is until the worst comes your way and you don’t see it coming
PLOT
Hostel follows two American friends, Paxton & Josh who backpack across Europe with Icelanidc acquaintance Oli. When passing through the Netherlands, Paxton encourages Josh to mingle with other women but the latter is too shy to try after going through a recent breakup. When being un-allowed back to their hotel due to curfew, they crash at the apartment of a local named Alexei. There, he convinces the trio to go to Slovakia where there is a hostel filled with beautiful women to easily hook up with. Upon taking the train there, they encounter a Dutch businessman who gets too comfortable by touching Josh's leg. When he expresses discomfort, the businessman leaves to avoid any more awkwardness. At the hostel, the guys share the room with two other women named Natalya and Svetlana. Both parties spend most of the day together from going to a spa to attending a nightclub. Around that time, Josh gets cornered by a gang of children until the businessman defends him. From there, they share a drink and make amends for the bad first impression on the train. The night ends with Paxton & Josh having sex with their roommates while Oli hooks up with the desk girl named Vala. By morning, the former two don't find their wheel at hostel and a Japanese woman named Kana shows them he left with her own friend Yuki. When they call Oli, it doesn't answer on the other side as he and Yuki have been killed via torture in a dungeon like room. While not hearing from their friend makes Josh worried, Paxton convinces him to stay another night at the nightclub with the girls. This only paves the way for them to drug the guys with tranquilizers in their drinks. Although Paxton is able to avoid any harm due to inadvertently getting locked in the pantry, whereas Josh gets taken to a similar dungeon room and goes through his own set of torture orchestrated by the businessman from earlier. The man drills holes in his body and slices his achilles tendon before slitting his throat. When Paxton returns to the hostel, he is told Josh checked out on their behalf and another pair of two women have already rented the room. He finds Natalya about to leave, but is able to convince her to help him find his friend. She takes him to an abandoned factory that is filled with multiple rooms of people being tortured before finding Josh's corpse being sewed up by the businessman. Paxton tries to make a break for it being stopped by two guards who restrain him for a german client credited as Johann. He considers mutilating his victim with a chainsaw and just before he could get started, Paxton fearfullly vomits while gagged. He seemingly moves forward when chopping two of his fingers of his left hand but when he gets closer, he slips on the gag and falls on his back, causing him to accidentally to sever his own leg. This gives Paxton the chance to break free and shoot his obstacle with a gun. He then kills a guard as well as a butcher before dawning a disguise of business attire to discreetly leave. As he puts on said clothes, he finds a business card for the 'Elite Hunting Club', an organization that allows clientele to kill/mutilate tourists. On the way out though, Paxton hears Kana's screams to confirm she was abducted and chooses to save her from an american client. With her face disfigured by a blowtorch, she loses an eye in the process. Paxton steals a car that results in him and Kana getting pursued by other guards. As he drives to a train station, he chooses to run over the pair of not only Natalya & Svetlana, but also Alexei who were all in on the operation. He then pays off the delinquents with gum to get the guards off his tracks which they do by killing them with concrete blocks. By the time of reaching the station, Kana becomes terrified of her disfigurement that she kills herself by leaping in front of an oncoming train. Despite the shock, Paxton still boards another train unnoticed. He would feel a bit of relief until hearing the same businessman nearby. When the train briefly stops in Vienna, he takes matters in his own hands by killing him in a public bathroom, avenging the murder of Josh. The film ends with Paxton re-boarding the train and seemingly escape from what he thought to have been unimaginable.
THOUGHTS
2004's Saw was the pioneer of torture porn and after a successful debut with Cabin Fever in '02, writer/director Eli Roth capitalized in topping such a graphic atmosphere to officially popularize the sub genre. Due to how Roth himself encountered a website that offered murder tourism, that was enough inspiration to show actually how demented the world is when we're looking from the other direction. From start to finish, you don't feel safe with what you're watching, which is the point because once the tension, you can't turn it back down. Solely off of past horror flicks that had moments of characters losing a limb or two, I thought I was prepared for all the mutilation but boy was I wrong. I just kept flinching and wondering how the hell is this even possible to fathom in the human mind because I couldn't believe it to be when seeing an eyeball get severed after getting burnt. All the puss got to me in an inconceivable manner I almost vomited like Paxton did. It was one thing to notice corrupt cops, but I again got caught offguard seeing delinquents willing to kill adults over fucking candy. All of this violence sets up justified paranoia that any stranger could take advantage of you and you have to keep your guard up unless you want to set up your own funeral. With the lead characters bound to be victims start out as extremely obnoxious, it gets hard to root for them and that makes a lot of sense because America is filled with such complicated individuals you don't know who to trust/root for. Eythor Gudjonnson did make Oli the life of a party which can be good when going out, but it was too much for the character’s own good. Then it becomes a back and forth feeling when it comes to Paxton & Josh. Derek Richardson makes the latter the most hesitant one because he’s never been single in a long time and doesn’t know how to put himself out there until he regains confidence. Jay Hernandez makes Paxton the most insistent on wanting his friend to have a good time, which is really eliminating the buzzkill without admitting his own intentions for lust. His selfishness does lead to consequences that he is lucky to get out of. While I would bail immediately once free from captivity, I respect him freeing Kana because even he knew she’s just as innocent based on how Jennifer Lim portrays her. She definitely gets the worst end of the shtick because the torture is so severe she felt no one would accept the new appearance she asked for, thus putting herself out of misery. I don’t condone suicide at all, but I understand the self neglect she felt at that moment. When Paxton got even when killing the businessman, I also respect that decision more than the unrated edition of abducting his daughter because although he deserved to avenge his friend, going any lower would not make him redeemable. As I pointed out Paxton is not a perfect individual, but at least he has some form of sanity compared to the Elite Hunting Club. Each member who takes part in such cruelty give their own of evil to show exactly how twisted people’s inner thoughts are when getting the chance to be embraced. Jan Vlasák was shockingly good at making the businessman for being deceptive until the cat is out of the bag. Petr Janiš showed Johann to be one confused on what he wanted to be satisfied as he showed hesitance towards Paxton. Barbara Nedeljáková & Jana Kaderabkova definitely had their own evil within as Natalya & Svetlana as they used their seductiveness to extreme advantage. The true scene stealer between these villains though is the American client because Rick Hoffman just lets loose on the character’s creativity, showing no remorse on the pain that’s being caused. The fact Paxton got to kill all three of these clients was a relief because he did a favor in eliminating the most secretive threat society could even fathom. Having said what makes an effective experience, there are some things that I gotta admit could’ve been done differently. Like for example, Oli definitely should’ve checked if he was gonna share the room with another party. Had he known, he could’ve told the guys and Josh likely would’ve been hesitant enough to the point of wanting to leave. Then again, they should’ve left once they were told Oli left because by then, I don’t think the girls would’ve tried any harder to trap them. Also, how were the kids so quiet when sneaking up on Paxton? That tripped me out more than trying to do the same to Josh at night when they create their own risk walking into parties bigger than Elite Hunting’s security. Lastly, it was so weird no one on Kana’s side on the train track pays attention to her and only people across did. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to ignore a woman who just lost her eye. Oth than that, this movie gets the job done with the shock value. In short, Hostel is a horror classic for telling us something we had to know in the grandest way possible. If the Saw movies got you into torture porn, good luck getting into this.
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