Review of Hostel (2006) by Thequietgamer — 20 Oct 2017

There's a subgenre of horror known as "torture porn." Popularized by the likes of the Saw series, these kinds of scary flicks are known for their emphasis on gore and extreme violence. The whole idea is for the audience to either be horrified or excited by graphic displays of gruesome deaths. Hostel is one of the more well-known torture porn horror films, and a result has a sort of stigmata attached to it. For the life of me though I can't quite tell why. For the majority of it's running time it's more a raunchy sex-comedy than a horror film. Despite having Eli Roth in both the director's and writer's chair, the movie is more tame than one might expect what with Roth's reputation and all.

Two obnoxious college students and one weird drifter set off backpacking around foreign countries in search of sex. Their quest for orgasms leads them to a small town where the word on the street is that the women are hot, horny, and love men from other countries. The movie starts off just following these guys around as they party, screw, and act like dumb sex-obsessed men. Expect plenty of nudity and f-bombs, as well as those weird moments I've noticed a lot of in Eli Roth movies that don't really make any sense until they become surprisingly important to the plot later on. From there it's a weird, confusing slog through the middle until things finally ramp up again.

What's most surprising about the movie is that it's not actually very gory. At least not in the way you would think. In fact most of the nasty and violent takes place off-screen. Roth pulls his punches in ways you really wouldn't expect. I'm not sure if it's because of a lack of budget or just that he didn't have the stomach when it finally came down to it, but there's only one really nasty moment in the film. Whether or not that's a good thing just comes to down to your tastes. The actual torture is brief and muted. The majority of the action comes down to a game of cat-and-mouse as we watch Jay Hernandez try to escape with his life. There's blood along the way, but this is a surprisingly tame torture porn flick.

There are some clever moments in Hostel and one heck of a satisfying ending. It's pretty fun to watch the douchebags get punished for being douchebags, and there is some surprising violence along the way. The movie also isn't shy on throwing some gorgeous bare bodies onscreen as well. You're going to have to put up with some frat boy humor and a dull mid-section, but by far the most disappointing aspect of the film is that Eli Roth never takes us back to those 70's era exploitation film levels of gratuity that he's so well-known for. It may make things more watchable than they otherwise would have been, but despite easier on the eyes and stomach, there's no denying it's the one thing holding Hostel back from being something truly noteworthy. At least it's still entertaining.