Hostel (2005) and Hostel: Part II (2007)

 

Hostel (2005) and Hostel: Part II (2007)

 

Can someone please explain to me why anyone on this planet thinks Writer/Director Eli Roth has talent?

 

After receiving wholly undeserved praise for “Cabin Fever” (2003), Roth returned with another extravaganza of White-on-White racism that should’ve repelled and disgusted every single viewer, especially since those viewers were mostly White, but succeeded stupendously because White-on-White Racism is really about class, not skin-color, and those of us who have enough money to pay for movie tickets are very comfortable demeaning Hillbillies and the residents of former Soviet Republics as “White Trash,” which is a phrase originally coined by Black Slaves in the Antebellum South to describe Whites viewed as even lower than those in bondage, and who eventually proved secondary targets (a distant second) to the freed Blacks under the Jim Crow Laws.

 

While “Cabin Fever” was disappointing because it was a catalogue of missed narrative opportunities, “Hostel” allowed itself few opportunities of substance to miss -- Simply put, it wasn’t a film that failed to deliver, it was barely a film at all.

 

“Torture Porn” is a phrase coined by Critic David Edelstein. He was complaining about how the Horror Genre, apparently bored with old-school Slashers, was groping for some new, shallow, trend to imitate, and moved away from films dependent on Stalking Sequences and the abrupt violation of suburban normalities (think “Halloween” (1978)) and towards films that had lower body-counts, but were far more gruesome, because they were about captivity, slow torture, and fear of -- not death -- but being demeaned, humiliated, and mutilated.

 

Edelstien, obviously didn’t like the trend, but not all these films are bad, even though they are all hard to watch. The French have produced a remarkably large number that are artistically worthwhile (and when you’re talking about the French ones, we like to call them the “New French Extreme” because Torture Porn is so derisive). Edelstien, himself, eventually softened his opinion of “Wolf Lake” (2005), one of the films that inspired the coinage, but was, in fact, pretty good.

 

Still, most of these a pure shite, sickening in both philosophy and demonstration, and “Hostel” scrapes the bottom of the barrel of what was already barrel’s bottom.

 

Here’s the set up:

 

Three not very smart or likable, testosterone-fueled, college-aged, White males, (Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, and Eythor Gudjonsson) go on vacation, get tempted by the Apple of Sin, and find themselves sold into slavery at brothel where totally sicko rich guys pay oodles on money to torture young people to death. Notably, two of the three main victims are from the USA, as are most developed of the sickos who hurt then (example: Rick Hoffman, providing the film’s best performance). In the end, only one of the White guys escapes and manages to work in a little violent revenge along the way.

 

That’s a very detailed plot outline. There’re a couple narrative complications and attempts at characterization along the way to justify the running time, but they amount to nothing. This is a bluntly simple film targeting an audience is only interested in watching the torture. Torture is frowned upon in most Pornography, while Torture Porn movies are generally Mainstream (or Main-ish-stream), so regular Hollywood has finally managed sink lower than most Porn.

 

The story begins in the Utopian tourist-trap of Amsterdam, where prostitution and hashish are legal, and the violent crime rate is way lower than the USA. Had the kids decided to stay there, there’d be no movie. But on a quest for more (MORE than Amsterdam? Are you kidding me? Don’t you appreciate Baroque architecture?) they’re seduced into visiting that ultimate cesspool of sub-human, but still White-skinned, depravity, Slovakia, where the women are extra-sex-starved because there are so few men left "because of the war."

 

Ummm … what war? Slovakia hasn’t been at War since WWII. True, the place is damned poor, but is also enjoying steady economic growth, so less poor when this film was made than it was in late 1980s, and therefore not despairing. It also has a much lower violent crime rate than the USA (though in fairness to the idiot Producers, it does have a very serious Human Trafficking problem).

 

This is where the White-on-White racism is most obvious. Set in a sub-Saharan African county, no distributor would touch this film, but in a former Soviet Republic? Well, we all know they’re nothing but White Trash, and it our PC world, we can treat them that way. And this isn’t even a new thing -- back in 2001 two true-blue USA Cops (Robert De Niro and Edward Burns) were hunting Eastern European scum (Karel Roden and Oleg Taktarov) across New York City in “15 Minutes”; but it made no sense in the plot for the bad guys being Eastern European except that having them be darker-skinned would’ve caused trouble. (One would’ve hoped that the Producers had realized that having a crappy script would cause even more trouble).

 

Maybe this film could’ve been something. Before the main plot is fully engaged, we are offered an image of the mixture of innocence and entitlement that, in the real world, tourists often display and sometimes leads them into trouble. But the characters as thinly sketched, unappealing, and except for one of the Villains, the performances are not especially dynamic (take a few moments to review this film’s cast with a Google search, pretty much everyone in this film did better work elsewhere). It’s inferior to claustrophobic Horror fellow Torture Porn flick “Saw,” which it borrows heavily from, but it also borrows heavily from the cheeky frat-boy comedy, “Eurotrip” and is again inferior. Both “Saw” and “Eurotrip” were released roughly one year before “Hostel” (meaning 2004) and both were better focused and featured better characterization.

 

It’s worth bringing up “Nazi Exploitation,” another dubious sub-genre of Horror that passed out of fashion decades ago. During its heyday, the mid-1970s, many of the films produced had delusions of being Art Films (Pier Paolo Pasolini's “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom” (1975), and Tinto Brass's “Salon Kitty” (1976)). In Nazi Exploitation, everything hinges on the idea that when one’s subject is the ultimate evil, the Pornography is not really Porn, but a moral statement. More than most films now labeled as Torture Porn, “Hostel” borrows from Nazi Exploitation, though with fewer artistic pretensions. I guess we should grateful that this new wave of Exploitation films, set too late in history to posture as real political statement, have no Art House pretensions and do pursue a greater identification with the Prey than the Predator (a notable break from most old-school Slashers of the 1980s) but they are still just as exploitive, and there’s little point denying otherwise.

 

It’s also worth bringing up that when the film came out, the Slovacs were pissed. Minister to Parliament Tomas Galbavy, a member of the Culture Committee, "I am offended by this film. I think that all Slovaks should feel offended … this monstrosity that does not at all reflect reality [and would] damage the good reputation of Slovakia." Linda Heldichova of the Slovak Culture Ministry, "We are unanimous in saying that this film damages the image of our country." The newspaper SME raged about their homeland being shown "a backward country, where our beautiful young girls are the lowest whores."

 

As it happens, the movie wasn’t filmed in Slovakia, but the neighboring Czech Republic, and all the Slovakian Villains are not speaking Slovak, but Czech. This is significant because under cruel Soviet Domination (established by a 1948 coupe because the Communists knew they would lose in the next Free-and-Fair Election), the two had been one country, but after the Soviet collapse, they split, with almost no violence and no official acrimony.

 

But I’ve visited both countries and can testify that unofficial acrimony is definitely there. The way this film got made seems to suggest that the Czech view their former countrymen as bad as the way Donald Trump viewed Mexicans (“rapists”) and the whole of sub-Saharan Africa (“shithole countries”), or maybe even worse, like how those of us who live in New York State view our neighbors in New Jersey.

 

Another important contrast between old-school Nazi Exploitation and the new Torture-Porn era is that, over all, cinema is now in an era of sequels and, God in Heaven, “Hostel” is now a franchise. None of the Art-House Nazi Exploitation did that (though several of their cheaper, and more honestly Exploitive, imitators pursued franchise with some enthusiasm).

 

“Hostel: Part II” switched the gender of the main victims, and is better acted and structured (until the last twenty minutes, which takes the film’s nihilism to the realm of pure silliness), plus a lot better shot, but it’s still the same damned movie. Though not a fan, I want to grant this film credit that can’t be applied to the original -- In the earlier passages, before the Horror is realized, it better articulates how being in a new place and not knowing the rules is disorientating and scary, best articulated through the character Beth Salinger (Lauren German), it also better explores how trust is too often too easily given, and therefore very easily betrayed, demonstrated even with suspicious Beth, but even more so with her companions Whitney Swerling and Lorna Weisenfreund (Bijou Phillips and Heather Matarazzo). There’s also a brutal sequence about half-way through concerning child delinquents called the “Bubble Gum Gang” (minor characters in both films, and having more impact on the audience than one would suspect given their tiny on-screen time) that better articulates the power of Authoritarianism than a dozen other films that were more explicitly politically-minded.

 

But again, it was set in Slovakia but filmed in the Czech Republic. Also like the predecessor, was dependent more on word-of-mouth than traditional marketing, and at this point in history, word-of-mouth really means Internet chatter. The Internet certainly attracted a lot of attention to the film, but also nearly killed it. Though popular, it was also heavily bootlegged, apparently more than usual, maybe because it was so obviously Exploitation, it was treated like more conventional Porn and most consumers believed they were entitled to steal. Despite its obvious popularity, it proved financially disappointing.

 

I watched the first two only because I was a completist following a list. I refuse to watch the third one (2011), but was somewhat amused to read that the action was moved from Slovakia to Las Vegas, USA. Finally, we perverse Americans admit we’re actually Americans, and what Slays in Vegas, Stays in Vegas.

 

“Hostel” trailer:

Hostel Trailer - YouTube

 

“Hostel: Part II” trailer:

Hostel: Part II (2007) - Trailer - YouTube