Hostel

I finally got around to watching Hostel the other day. Are you fucking serious? Really? People like this shit? It pisses me off that when I say I like horror, this is what people assume I’m into, which is really too bad, since this has no redeeming qualities. The only things worse than this are PG-13 action and horror.

The first half of the movie is spent on some douche bag American frat boys out on a European jaunt before delving into lives of corporate meaninglessness. All they want to do is bang hot Euro sluts, smoke weed, and party. Are we supposed to want them do die? Because I do. They eventually get lured to a Slovakian hostel where they get fucked and drugged and, oh yeah, eventually kidnapped and tortured by rich dudes who paid for the privilege.

In reality, this is just the most recent adaptation of “The Most Dangerous Game,” which was written in 1924 by the way. You should watch Hard Target, it is the same story, a much more entertaining movie, and you get to see Van Damme’s jerry curl mullet flapping around in slow motion for ninety-seven minutes. Or check out Surviving the Game, and watch Ice-T fuck up Gary Busey, Rutger Hauer, and John C. McGinley.

These new-jack torture films aren’t horror. There is no tension, there isn’t any story, and they are not scary. I’m all for gratuitous blood and guts and gore, but all of this is to no end. I know writer/director Eli Roth and some critics have stated this movie has lofty goals, like showing capitalism gone to an unchecked extreme, and the nature of violence, and all that fun stuff. There are hints of these things, but just hints, and it is chiefly to excuse excessive and pointless violence by hiding behind a supposed message. The gore serves no larger purpose other than to be gory. I can’t stand the Saw movies, that entire franchise is a lame pile of crap, but at least they try to include the elements of horror that make the genre truly frightening. They try to have plots and surprises and twists and friction and legitimate scares. This movie has none of that.

And for a movie that relies solely on gore as the central focus (well, a good portion of the movie is also focused on naked breasts, so there’s that), the gore isn’t that good. The camera looks away for most of it. We get a snap and a scream over a shot of a dingy floor. Even what we do see is pretty run of the mill. The Achilles’ tendon cutting scene in Pet Sematary is way more brutal than the one in Hostel.

If you insist on watching stuff like this, at least get something Japanese so you can see some shit, not this nonsense mush for American audiences that has to be watered down because no one has the balls to release an NC-17 movie. Who the fuck are they going to let into the theater to see this anyway? I got carded for Pulp Fiction when I was seventeen.

The only thing about this movie I liked is the group of feral Gypsy children who randomly show up to demand cigarettes and bubble gum, and are capable of horrific acts of violence on their own. I partially retract an earlier statement. When the kids crush the skulls of two big burly thugs, it does look pretty cool.

Shit, this movie makes me want to torture Americans for making the rest of the world think I’m a butt hole.