Quite Possibly The Worst Horror Film Ever Made - 'Hostel' Review...
"Liberate tute me, es en ferris."Now, if my repeated viewings of Event Horizon have taught me correctly, the above statement, translated from Latin, means "Save yourself from Hell." By "Hell," of course, I mean the horrendous experience of watching this unbelievably bad movie, and by "save yourself," of course, I mean for GOD'S sake don't watch it. One out of ten is about ten times too high.
Dear Mr. Roth,
Listen, keep my $9, you prick, just give me back my 95 minutes, my dignity, and my respect for horror movies.
You have stolen from me.
I happen to believe in the theory that whenever you see someone tied to a chair in a movie, you have a screenwriter that ran out of ideas. Following that logic, this movie never had a thought in its head from the very beginning. I have to admit that in the first act, I was positively beaming at the screen I was so interested in where the film was going (because of the sexual element and an accompanying feeling that the movie was not going to cop out and go where every other horror movie involving sex went).
Had I taken two seconds to see that this movie was directed by the same jerkoff who defecated Cabin Fever into theaters a couple of years ago I would have known not to watch it in the first place, but sadly I just checked the movie times and went out and paid $9 to be tortured through my eyes for an hour and a half.
[caption id="attachment_23334" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Don't ask..."]
[/caption]This movie seems to have been hugely popular at the Toronto International Film Festival, I can only theorize that the people who wrote glowing reviews of the movie are either closet sociopaths or were simply starstruck that the director was there talking about this film, pretending it wasn't the revolting sludge that it is.
I promise you, this is one of the absolute worst films of any kind that I have ever seen.
In case you still care, here's what it's about. Some Americans go to Amsterdam for drugs and sex (as Americans are wont to do, unfortuantely) and are advised to go to a certain hostel in Slovakia where beautiful women will just pounce on them. They find this to be startlingly true, until the girls drug them, big guys come and take them down into the dungeon and strap them to chairs in separate rooms, and for $25,000, rich people can come in and torture and kill them in any way they can think of (could it be for revenge against those dirty Americans for coming into our countries and dirtying the place up?).
Directed by an American, by the way.
Of course, you can't really claim that the movie is only racist against Americans, because you can buy access to other ethnicities as well (for a substantially lower price). One creative individual decides to save some money and just go for a low-price Japanese girl rather than an expensive American, and he proceeds to blowtorch her face until one of her eyes bulges out of its socket and hangs down on her cheek. Our "hero" then manages to escape his own torture chamber and shoot and kill his tormentor, and goes into the room and shoots the guy torturing the girl. He then displays a massive surge of brilliance by apologetically cutting off her eyeball, sending white pus running down her cheek, and THEN tries to get her out of there.
[caption id="attachment_23336" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="One of Hostel's charming cast members."]
[/caption]When the movie thankfully ended, I have never in my life felt the urge so strongly to find the manager and demand my money back, the film is that sick and that twisted and utterly without redeeming value.
I am absolutely baffled at the people who have praised this movie. This thing is so disgusting and so cheap and so stupid and sick that it blows my mind that there are people who really think there is some social value to a movie that makes you wonder how you would torture someone. And to make matters worse, nothing is resolved at the end. We are handed this cardboard resolution that solves nothing at all, the fire is dimmed by dousing a flame here and there, leaving the smoldering source of the torturous blaze firmly burning.
I don't even want to give this mass of congealed stupidity and perversion the pleasure of a spoiler alert, so I'll just give you an analogy.
[caption id="attachment_23337" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The site of the death of modern horror movie creativity.."]
[/caption]The main character, Paxton, is a man lost in the woods, when suddenly he's attacked by a bear. Ultimately, he is faced with the possibility of picking up a gun and shooting the bear, but instead decides to stomp on the bear's foot, and the movie ends as he runs cowering into the woods.
This film is absolute drivel of the lowest order, a pitiful attempt to do something new in the horror genre by removing all elements of story, character, reason, creativity, tension, depth, thought, and meaning, and reducing itself to nothing but a lot of people strapped to chairs and being mutilated alive.
If this is entertainment to you, you have some real problems. This movie strikes me as the kind of thing that would be enjoyed by someone who gets a real kick out of those disgusting videos that have been coming out of Iraq.
I feel violated just because I've seen this movie.
The Bean Meter
[caption id="attachment_23332" align="aligncenter" width="245" caption="Hostel gets no beans. Not even half. But here's a tumbleweed for you. It's more interesting than the movie."]
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