Eli Roth's hostel

Just because there are other terrible horror movies out there doesn't make Hostel a gift from god for horror fans.

The movie is flawed. I truly feel it is. Is it better than alot of other recent horror films? Sure. Does it dare to go farther? Most definately. Is it original however? No i disagree. Everything wraps up conveniently thanks to "Fate". The necessary bad guys are given their comuppance. ( i think i butchered the spelling on that one).

This movie would have blown me away if there was no retribution. It had a great setup and for a good 20 minutes I thought it was going to go the way a horror movie should. And then all of a sudden the train jumped tracks and went down the path of conventionality. I would have loved this movie if everything didn't get wrapped up nicely. If the audience wasn't laughing and shouting "Yea run that Skank over!" for 3/4s of the movie. That's not horror that sounds like the reaction of a crowd watching a Die Hard or some other action film. When i saw high tension in theaters for the first time you could not count on two hands the number of people that left that theater in the first half hour. I heard a woman openly weap when the little boy was shot. That's horror.

I stand by my convictions. Eli Roth needs to lay off the punch lines and stereotypes and while I'll acknowledge this was an improvement the genre of Horror still has a way to go.
 
Good points.
I like your posts, machinist.

And I agree with High Tension, but the ending and the "twist" just ruined the preceding 90 minutes of horror and brutality. I mean, does there always have to be some cool, trendy, twist to have the film click with audiences.

I would've been so happy if it just was some maniac instead of a "split personality or whatever it was.

But Aja is def. a man to watch and looking forward to his take on The Hills, even though he's a few steps behind Roth.:grin:
 
Thank you.

And yes the twist....ugh the twist....It's like a hairy mole on a hot babe...


I hope he's abandoned the need for a twist with Hills.
 
when i saw high tention i saw children under 5 in the theater and people laughing and have fun.... i dont thin kit matter anyway im so desensitited nothing scares or grosses me out. so horror is no longer horror to me. its just normal.
 
I thought the advertising was way off for this film. It took forever to get into the only part they showed in trailers. And then it ended quickly. The really cool parts were lit very dark and went by very quick.

It was probably the most predictable movie Ive seen in a long time. And they could have done alot better with the makeup. I feel that they rushed on this one and you could see it.

I didnt like it very much. Im sure many people on here could make better horror.

I read theyre coming out with a Hostel 2....
 
I haven't read all five pages of posts, so sorry if i repeat here...

I liked Hostel a lot overall. What I liked most was that it wasn't predictable in the usual way... for example...when we meet the three victims...I mean male leads... I had picked who would live and the order they would die in. It was nice to be wrong and to not have a story that sticks so closely to the old, misinterpreted archetypes of the 80s and 90s horror flicks.

Some of the make ups were just okay but the effects overall I thought were good. There were a lot of nice subtle touches in the back ground "parts" and lighting and set design. It went a long way towards making a nice (?) atmosphere.

I enjoy Roth's style so far. I am curious to see what he does next. He is co-producing the 2001 Maniacs remake starring Robert Englund...that should be really interesting! Unrated I believe. On DVD in March. A screening will be done in Manhattan earlier in the month if you are interested and in the area.
 
Yea i agree he did a really good job creating a nightmare environment in those catacombs. However his choices for the world and events that occur outside of that pit still degrade the film's enjoyment for me.
 
Filmjunkie677 said:
Good points.
I like your posts, machinist.

And I agree with High Tension, but the ending and the "twist" just ruined the preceding 90 minutes of horror and brutality. I mean, does there always have to be some cool, trendy, twist to have the film click with audiences.

I would've been so happy if it just was some maniac instead of a "split personality or whatever it was.

But Aja is def. a man to watch and looking forward to his take on The Hills, even though he's a few steps behind Roth.:grin:
Click to expand...

There was a lot I enjoyed about High Tension, but it wasn't a great movie. The twist ruined it and even had there not been a twist the movie had some open holes. Everything being too convienent for the killer, etc.

I liked the notion that it was just some random nut alot better, but of course they couldn't just so something that simple, could they? heaven forbid!
 
spidey said:
same thing at saw 1 and 2 and a few kids at hostel like 7 or so.
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I have this argument with my wife all the time. When I was a wee little one, I made my mom take me to all the new horror movies that came out. I loved them. Some of my best memories of childhood are those afternoons in the theatre with her...and one other kid who dragged his mom. The movies were a bit different perhaps...Evil Dead, Silent Night, Deadly Night, Halloween 2, Alien (ok I only saw this up until the creature broke through the chest-then I played video games in the lobby), American Werewolf in London, many of the Friday the 13ths, etc.

I'm sure there were people who thought my mom was wrong for taking me to a rated R horror movie, but so what. I wanted to go. I never had nightmares. I wasn't scarred for life. I didn't turn into a serial killer or wife beater.

I think as a kid we/I look at the movie differently. It was about the EFX for me as a kid... the gore. There wasn't the same comprehension that people were being killed, etc. It was just a movie. Hell, half the time I was rooting for Jason, Michael Myers, etc.

As a kind of adult, I do have mixed feelings about it. There are kids that are clearly dragged there by their parents, not the other way around and that does bother me in a making a nun watch a porno kind of way. But if my kid turns out to be a horror nut...which he/she is apt to be since my wife loves the stuff too...I'm going to start them on the Universal monsters and work my way up... and I can only hope they have as many fond memories of Saturday afternoons spent with me and my wife at the movies watching horror movies... hopefully my wife and I will have made some by then too!!!
 
I haven't read any of the posts in this thread yet because until that torture thread this movie was sort of under my radar...Well last night after our seder I decided to stop by Blockbuster where one of my friends works and got a free advance copy of Hostel. I was curious about this film when it was in theatres, but I've sort of become anti theatre because you can't smoke and there are people there. I don't like going to places where I can't smoke and since I'm around people all day at work I would rather not see them in my free time. That being said, I had sort of mixed expectations for this film.

Now that I have seen it twice in 12 hours I feel like I'm pretty well versed in this film.

First of all, the story completely sucks. It is a very loose concept and makes me think that Eli Roth read 'Most Dangerous Game' or saw the cheesy Van Damme or Ice Cube rip off of this short story. It is really a distortion of that storyline. OK, so thin story aside it starts as this weird sex, drugs, and touring film. Then things get crazy and stay that way for the rest of the film.

The cinematography is really impressive with a nice use of close ups, steadicam, and lots of handheld which works well for a story of this sort. The lighting, well, I wasn't a fan of the film Broken, but it seemed like they lit this film the same way that Broken was lit. They both have a similar feel of dark crushed shadows and just a narrow depth of field. Regardless, it is pretty standard horror lighting that works well.

Sound - This film should serve as the how to manual for anyone who is going to make a film. The use of sound is what makes you cringe and throw your hand over your eyes. Without a second thought I really do believe that this film is a how to manual for how to use sound effectively in a film for result.

Overall, I would give the film 2 out of 5 stars, the acting is pretty bad, but there is a lot of violence and blood and the Tarantino commentary makes it worth owning, although he comes across as arrogant as imaginable. Either way, I don't think this is the sort of film that you can say you really enjoy. It reminds me a lot of From Dusk Till Dawn in that the first half of the movie and the second half of the movie are completely different projects. It goes from this weird stupid teen trip through Europe to this psycho killer film. Eh, I'll most likely own it just to study the torture stuff.

High Points - Best use of sound in a horror film ever, hot female nudity, interesting horror lighting, lots of blood, gore, and several cringe inducing moments of stomach churning violence

Lows - Bad main acting, some fake looking blood, very thin story line, violence goes on a bit too long at some points.

This, of course, is just my opinion...

-Jeremy
 
There are spoilers in my post, please be advised



I've never really seen a horror movie mixed with a revenge flick (the seventies horror revenge flicks like Last House on the Left and I Spit on Your Grave are lost on me, because I didn't see them in theaters due to a lack of life back then, and I don't wanna take them home and watch them with my parents in the room), so I think I enjoyed this movie a lot beause it was the first kind of raw and visceral "hell and back" story I'd seen. I mean, the movie I thought was great just because of how accurate it seemed story wise (the story wasn't great, true, but I mean, I know a lot of people their age that go to Europe for the reason of doing drugs and having sex) and then the turn for the "what the heck?" and finally the revenge. I mean, when I saw it, people were cheering in the aisles during the las t 10 or so minutes. I never thought that people would cheer on slovakian kids brutally clubbing someone to death, but this movie did exactly that, and got praise for it.

Overall, I would give it 3 out of 5 stars onr a general rating, and 4 out of 5 stars on a horror rating. I really like what Roth does with his movies. I was one of the few people that actually liked Cabin Fever just because it was such a good play on the old horror movies I had actually seen.
 
spencer said:
Overall, I would give it 3 out of 5 stars onr a general rating, and 4 out of 5 stars on a horror rating.
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Spencer, I guess this is where I need to disagree with you more than anything because I hold my horror films to a tougher scale than other films. Why? Because anything can be horror and you are able to bend the rules more. When you're dealing with horror, or more specifically, torture as this film does, you're dealing with a subject that most of the population has never experienced. Therefore you are guiding virgins into a land of your own making covered with milk and honey or blood and puss. I think that horror continues to reinvent genres because it can take us places we don't dare to go. Love stories, dramas, commedies, these are things we experience. Horror is foreign.

That being said, Roth obviously had a huge leash with this film to either guide the audience on a rollercoaster or hang himself. I really do feel that he hung himself with it because only for a few moments did he take us somewhere new.

After thinking about my above post further I am going to repeat myself. I think that this is just like From Dusk Till Dawn. There are two films in here, one of stupid kids getting high and laid and one about crazy psycho stuff and vengence. There is even that specific moment where the tone of the film changes.

Either way, I think it is worth a watch if you're into the high points and not worth it if you aren't into gore.

I'm curious to see more of this guys work, but for me, give me a story and I'll follow. Cheat me on the story and you can go screw yourself. I think that Roth lead me into him screwing himself. 50/50 if that much.

-Jeremy
 
Yeah, see, there's no need to disagree, i probably just stated my opinion wrong. I mentioned I hadn't seen many horror movies that really did this. So, to me, it was somewhat of a new thing, not needed to be reinvented because it was the only second time I had seen a torture type flick.

The other torture flick I had seen deserves a 5 on the horror scale, which I think was fairly original too: Audition. That film was weird, and creepy, and almost in the style of Hostel structure wise, but it kept a strange foreboding over the movie the whole time. It was always creepy, but seemed like two different movies. It did it a lot better than Roth, true.

But, that being said, it didn't take me on quite as fun of a ride as Hostel did in the last 20 or so minutes. I think that's why I liked it a lot still. But then, you still have to take environment into account as well, I suppose. I was in a big theater with a bunch of other people wholeheartedly enjoying it as well.

But yeah, my lack of horror movie knowledge probably gets this movie a higher rating than deserved. Audition still takes highest rank in that category, although if i considered Shaun of the Dead a part of the horror genre exclusively, it'd be at the top. Dawn of the Dead (not the remake) was good too. But that's about all I know, and that's strictly in a hollywood definition of the word "horror"

You wanna throw some titles at me that I might wanna see to bring down my grade of hostel?
 
I'm going to read through this thread so I can participate a little better but her eis my review

Hostel

I have heard a lot about this film and finally got around to watching it and the first thing I am going to say is; what a bunch of hype. I have 2 comments about this film that initially intrigued me , one being Tarantino's endorsement and another seeing it called 'the scariest film in a decade' by Harry at Aint it Cool News ....

Huh ?

I am not totally disappointed as it is a very enjoyable horror film; but it is never scary. It is horrifying at times with it's exploitive use of gore but not one time during the film do you get the heebe jeebes of feeling of being scared. This fact alone is major negative in my book. I want to be scared in a horror film.

Think Clarise going down into Hannibal's cell for the first time or Jamie Lee Curtis going upstairs for the first time in Halloween...

It just never happens in this.

We do get a ton of over-the-top gore and is mostly done just right sans one shot of a drill going into a characters thigh and then we get some cheap ass obligatory insert shot of the drill entering flesh; so ****ing 80's.

The film has it's share of drug use and most importantly, hot naked chicks having sex with dorks and that is a redeeming quality to this film but after what seems almost an hour of this do we finally get to the JUICY PARTS.

speaking of the characters; I am totally torn on this. I do not want to see the WB Players showing up, but not a single character in this is someone I recognized and for that matter, none of them seem like Movie Stars. And admittedly, in my film, I want a lead or two that have that 'Quality'.

The characters are pretty one dimensional but Roth tries to give us some depth with some lame storylines: one just broke up with is girl for example, and this guy you actually want to die early for being such a Nancy wet blanket. One witnessed a girl drowning as a child, one is just a horny party animal... there is even a scene where the lead chases some criminal children who steal his cell phone and stops himself short of strangling a kid; huh ?

These criminal children show up several times throughout the film for no apparent reason and it is a joke when they do. It reminded me of the kid in BETTER OFF DEAD yelling 'Two dollars!'

The film tries to sell us on the illusion that there are many many people involved in a conspiracy to abduct young travelers and submit them to torture and death at the hands of paying customers. It is a nice idea and definitely original but it never seems to go anywhere. But the people involved will be sure to party and have sex with you first before actually drugging you up in a public pub full of people.


This film is a quantum leap over Cabin Fever (Which I could have sworn was shot digitally by the way and imdb has it being shot 35mm) but still, there is nothing, and I mean nothing, in this film that showcases any signs of a great filmmaker. Although everything measures up to the standards of a professionally shot film, never is there a sequence or scene or shot that speaks anymore than that.

In other words, it could not have been shot any more boringly. I think of dynamic camera movement and I think Peter Jackson's Frighteners or Steven Chow's Kung Fu Hustle. With this we get 'Eh...'. Even the EX MASTER of terror John Carpenter used the camera with some wielding prow.

But, something did go right. The budget was 4.5 Million and it looks like it was at least $20 Million. It grossed 70 Million but most likely due to having Harry and Tarantino PIMP it like a hooker on discount night. At 1 hour and 35 Minutes , it is over really quick.

No mention ever of why the RING LEADER is a nut job and no mention how SO MANY FRIGGIN PEOPLE are involved in this.

Once again, this film has all the elements of a horror film MINUS one crucial ingredient: Actually Being Scared. Sure, the idea of abduction and torture and death is scary, but having the characters be drugged and then waking up already in the dungeon is boring. But at least we get lots of shots of hot naked lasses.

So look for more from Eli Roth but I'm not getting on his jock just yet and I have no idea why Harry and Quentin are smoking him off just yet

I'm going to go hard on this one.

2.5 out of 5 Hudson Stars
 
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