First of all, it starts off as a boring teen sex comedy with lots of deathly dull night club scenes, Euro babes getting naked and getting down to business. These shenanigans are instigated by obnoxious American students who are travelling across Europe seemingly by train. None of them are intelligent, interesting or possess an ounce of wit between them. I have watched Justin Timberlake music videos that are more interesting than what these lads get up to. There are 50 very slowly paced minutes of this rubbish The fun notch is turned up a bit when they get taken to the chambers where rich people pay good money to torture people and kill them in whatever way they want. This is actually an interesting concept, but unfortunately the characters are so weak, we don't really care what happens to them and we remain distant throughout all of the torture and murder. It is a curiously uninvolving scenario. Then we get a very silly revenge based end to the mayhem. Hostel spawned two sequels, I have watched them both but I couldn't tell you anything about them because they did not stick in my memory in any way. I don't know why Quentin Tarantino let his name be used in conjunction with Hostel. I will confess to owning and enjoying Hostel director Eli Roth's Cabin Fever - it is one of those guilty pleasure movies. However, Hostel is not a good film. The characterisation is dire. The special effects are up to scratch but the horror is cancelled out by the fact that we couldn't give a fig about these guys. Compare Roth's film to the French film Martyrs, which has a similar plot involving torture but manages to execute ten times more horror and revulsion, in a stylish manner with sympathetic characters. Hostel would love to be that awesome.
My first film watched was Carrie aged 2 on my dad's knee. Educated at The University of St Andrews and Trinity College Dublin. Fan of Arthouse, Exploitation, Horror, Euro Trash, Giallo, New French Extremism. Weaned at the bosom of a Russ Meyer starlet. The bleaker, artier or sleazier the better!
