Paradise Reel

Hostel

I have concluded that Hollywood is incapable of producing solid horror films of any kind. It is either that scenario or some bloke in the publicity department was dead asleep while watching this film and tried to market it as a horror flick. Either way, both reflect ambiguous intelligence in the industry. The first film for director Eli Roth was his sleeper horror hit “Cabin Fever” where he took updated the “stupid American teens looking for sex in secluded woods and then dying one by one” concept and gave it a refreshing spin. He now chimes in with his second offering, “Hostel” which comes across as a weak satire but even at that level it fails miserably.

‘Horror’ to the Americans, I have deduced, is primarily how much gore one can inject into a scene. The bigger the gross out factor, the better which translates to you squirming in your chair (or churn in your stomach) rather than send a chill down your spine like the horror films of old. And what better way to crank up the puke factor than snipping off a couple of digits? There is the token severing of a couple of fingers in this film like any other typical horror film of late (RE: “House of Wax” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”). There is also a gargantuan amount of gore (girls too, more on that later), explicitly depicted to all its bloody detail which Eli Roth blatantly capitalizes on. This leads me to wonder how much resources did this bugger actually devote to coming up with a proper storyline of any sort.

The concept is interesting enough to warrant me a second look but the storyline is so thin, its’ transparent. There are even points in the film where one wonders how the hell they are going keep the story going. Eli had an intriguing premise to work on but the buildup to the ‘meat’ of the film seems genuinely forced out of his arse. There are some throw backs to some horror classics and there is even a scene that seems lifted straight from some Japanese/Korean horror flick. He may have meant this film to be a parody of the horror genre but even parodies have a semblance of a plot to progress the story. What we are treated to is just another serving of “ignorant American teenagers” who are so dumb that they could strangle themselves with a cordless phone.

And what is the deal with “Quentin Taratino Presents” any way? What did that bloke do to warrant his name being plastered above the film’s marquee? When we see a “James Cameron Presents” or “A John Woo film” it is because ‘that name’ is responsible for directing the damn movie and not some swanky producer whose primary job is just to say “cool” and “I think you should go with THIS angle…”. Granted that Taratino produced some cult classics back in his “Reservoir Dogs” days but he seem to have hit a recent creative slump with “Kill Bill Vol.2” (Vol. 1 was awesome though) and his extended monologues. The point of the matter is that I definitely do not need Quentin’s John Hancock on a movie poster to motivate me to a movie, heck it might even have a reverse effect and drive audiences off to the hills.

While there is an abundance of gratuitous violence, Mr. Roth balances that with an equal amount of gratuitous nudity. The ladies who ‘seduce’ the willing American teens are more than willing to shed most of their clothing for whatever whim and fancy. One should be well sanitized to presence of breast and tits after the end of this film if not already. With the lack of plot and storyline, Eli Roth should have just axed the last two thirds of his film and kept the first thirty minutes of nudity and he would probably still have made the same amount of money.

The blood is plentiful and it flows thick like the river of chocolate in Willy Wonka’s candy factory. Watch this only if you are hard starved for dismemberment and the days of old “Friday the 13th” and “Nightmare” films where victims run around like headless chickens. And not to mention glorious plotholes. This might be worth a rental once it hits the video/DVD shelves but even then, you would probably have to have either a blood fetish or be seriously deprived of a happy childhood.