Hostel (2006)

• Review: ** ½ (out of ****)
• Starring: Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, Eythor Gudjonsson, Barbara Nedeljakova, Jan Vlasak, Jana Kaderabkova, Jennifer Lim, Keiko Seiko, Lubomir Bukovy, Jana Havlickova, Rick Hoffman, Petr Janis
• Director: Eli Roth
• Screenplay: Eli Roth
• Length: 94 min.
• MPAA Rating: R (For violence, gore, nudity, sex, profanity)

What has always made horror a stable genre is its ability todeliver a horrendous villain whose motives are so sinister that you can’t helpbut hate them. Films like Saw,however, take great pains to deliver moral quandaries. Hostel, though an interesting story, buries the moral imperativeand opts to make a realistic experience with a clear delineation between goodand evil.

It begins as such tales often do as two friends backpackacross Europe, winding up in the hotbed of youth experiences, Amsterdam. Paxton (Jay Hernandez) takes greatefforts to set Josh (Derek Richardson) up with a girl despite his meagerprotests. They are accompanied by well-traveled Icelander Oli (EythorGudjonsson) whose limited ability with English makes him the desultory comicrelief.

They uncover word that a hostel in a small Slovakian townmay provide their best experience, so they take a train there only to discoverthat the beautiful town holds a dark secret. Hostel goes to great pains to mask its villains, though from thepreview, you’re able to pick up certain hints it drops along the way. By thetime Oli disappears (only to resurface later), you’ve got a pretty firm graspon who the scoundrels are. But the films major twist is yet to come.

While the idea of a pay-for-torture service for the wealthyisn’t an entirely new concept, it’s handled with grim effectiveness by Cabin Fever writer and director EliRoth. We know by film’s end that the concept is perfectly possible but thereality of the capture and torture is what keeps the film alive.

When Paxton is finally captured, the scenes of hisincarceration and the beginnings of his torture are as realistic as any fan ofthe genre could hope. It’s not until his inevitable escape that the film dragsinto slash-and-chase territory. He discovers his dead friends and even tries torescue a young Asian torturee but by this point, all the typical slasherelements have surfaced and the film has nowhere to go but down the dark path ofpredictability.

Hernandez and Richardson provide sufficiently angst-riddenperformances. Richardson’scharacter revelation at the one-third mark isn’t entirely surprising but itsemotional weight is meaningless by the time his doom arrives. Hernandezpresents Paxton as a typical college guy who is both headstrong andcompassionate. Although these kinds of films always feature a character worthyof cheering on, Hernandez makes Paxton as flesh-and-blood as possible. Evenwhen he’s begging for his life, we can feel his inner turmoil and fear. Itspalpable and realistic and just the jolt the film needs to avoid beingrelegated to the forgettable morass of genre pics.

Hostel begs forits viewers to put themselves in the places of these characters. It hopes thatwe’ll identify enough with their situation that we not only become invested intheir survival but we will begin to speculate what we would do in such a diresituation. Though it isn’t difficult for any male teen or college student inthe last 10 to 20 years to see himself in such characters, women and olderviewers won’t generally be able to relate and may easily be turned off by itsisolationism. Horror has always been a male-targeted genre.

Even with films like TheGrudge and The Ring presentingstrong female characters who fight against horrific evil, horror will likelyalways carry a masculine-dominant gene. Perhaps Roth’s planned sequel, whichwill follow three women on a likely similar trajectory, can illuminate along-abandoned, and quickly ballooning demographic for the genre. We’ll justhave to wait and see.

-Wesley Lovell (September 13, 2006)