Hostel follows three unlikable meatheads as they backpack through Europe in search of alcohol and easy women. The first half of the film could easily be mistaken for a ridiculous movie in the American Pie vein: there are naked women and stupid wisecracks in abundance. The second half of the film, however, shifts gears abruptly to scenes of gratuitous torture and violence when a hard-partying town in Slovakia proves to offer pleasures catering to a more sadistic set than the T&A crowd. Despite seeming vacuous on the surface, Hostel is actually a pretty clever little film, especially in the way that it changes the exploitation of Eastern Europe as a destination for sexual tourism into a trap that cunningly exploits the unwary tourists who wish to indulge in the seedy sex trade; peel back the layers even further, and Hostel provides an apt view on just how Americans are viewed by the rest of the world in general. Of course, all of these ideas are often cloaked beneath buckets of grue and gore. Hostel doesn’t pull many punches in that department, but the mix of bloodshed and commentary really works here. Of course, Eli Roth can’t resist putting in some absurd plot ideas, though never to the bewildering extent that he did in Cabin Fever. (Watch out for those vicious gangs of sugar-hungry children when overseas!) Overall these stylistic touches, which may be Roth’s mark as an auteur, don’t detract much from what is otherwise a nice bit of flesh straight off the bone.

There are no comments yet. You could be the first!