Hostel (film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hostel
Hostel film poster
Directed by	Eli Roth
Produced by	Eli Roth Quentin Tarantino Scott Spiegel (executive)
Written by	Eli Roth Quentin Tarantino(uncreadited rewrite)
Starring	Jay Hernandez Derek Richardson Eythor Gudjonsson Barbara Nedeljakova
Distributed by	Lions Gate Films Screen Gems
Release date(s)	Nov. 12, 2005 (premiere) January 6, 2006 April 18, 2006 (DVD)
Running time	95 min.
Country	USA
Language	English / Czech / German / Icelandic / Japanese / Dutch / Italian / Slovak
Budget	$4.5 million
Followed by	Hostel: Part 2
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Hostel (2005) is director Eli Roth's second feature film. The movie is rated R for brutal scenes of torture and violence, strong sexual content, language, and drug use. Due to the graphic nature of this film, its showing has been restricted in certain countries, primarily those with strict censorship policies. The film was billed as "inspired by true events". Director Eli Roth claims he found a Thai website that advertised itself as a "murder vacation," offering users the chance to torture and kill someone for $10,000. Roth showed the site to Quentin Tarantino and the two developed the idea for the film. Tarantino and Roth told an Icelandic talk show that they have no idea if the website was real or not.

[edit] Plot

Hostel follows three backpackers in search of easy thrills in Europe, who are lured to an obscure hostel in Slovakia and become victims of a secret thrill-kill industry.

The film opens with a man washing blood down the drain of a mysterious-looking room. The action then moves to Amsterdam, where the backpackers are introduced. Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and Josh (Derek Richardson) are Americans and Óli (Eyþór Guðjónsson) is from Iceland. Looking for cheap thrills instead of art, they enjoy repeated experiences of drugs and prostitution. While set in Amsterdam, these scenes were actually filmed in the Czech Republic.

After being kicked out of a club and locked out of their hotel, they meet Alexi (Lubomir Šilhavecký), a Russian man who tells them of a Slovakian hostel that is filled with American-loving, sexually promiscuous women. During the train journey, they encounter a Dutch businessman (Jan Vlasák) whose bizarre, sexually forward behaviour alarms them. On arrival at the hostel, they find they are sharing their room with Natalia (Barbara Nedeljáková) and Svetlana (Jana Kadeřábková), who are apparently Italian and Russian. The room in which they are staying is Room 237, a reference to The Shining, one of Hostel's numerous allusions to other thrillers. The girls invite the new arrivals to a spa and later have sex with Paxton and Josh after a night out at a club. During the night, the Dutchman from the train reappears, rescuing Josh from a confrontation with local street kids.

The next morning, the Americans discover that Óli is missing; as they leave the hostel in an effort to locate him, they are approached by a young Japanese woman named Kana (Jennifer Lim). Her friend Yuki has also disappeared. She shares with them a photo, sent to her phone, of the missing pair superimposed over the smokestack of an abandoned factory nearby, along with the word "Sayonara". Josh and Paxton refuse to believe that Óli would have left without informing them, and continue their search for him. Catching sight of a man wearing Óli's distinctive jacket, they follow him before catching up to him in a torture museum. When confronted, the stranger claims the jacket is his. While returning to the hostel, Paxton receives another picture message on his cell phone. The image is of Óli's head with the caption "I go home". Again, the Americans are less than convinced, but decide to leave Bratislava with Kana the following day. That night, while partying less than enthusiastically with Natalia and Svetlana, both men apparently succumb to drugs. Josh returns to the hostel, but Paxton is accidentally locked in the disco's storage room, where he passes out. Later, Josh wakes up handcuffed and in a dungeon-like room. The Dutch businessman enters and begins to systematically torture him with a power drill. When Josh begs for his life, the torturer slashes the backpacker's Achilles tendons, then removes his handcuffs and allows him to leave. Unable to walk, Josh attempts to crawl to the exit before the Dutchman kills him off-screen.

Paxton is released from the storage room the next morning and finds his surroundings growing more and more mysterious. He returns to the hostel to find that Kana is now also missing. Returning to his room, he finds a new pair of beautiful women inviting him to the spa in the same manner as earlier in the film. He wanders the streets looking for the smokestack in the background of the cellphone photo of Óli, but has the phone stolen by the same gang of violent children who had previously accosted him and Josh. Paxton reports the disappearances to a local police officer (Miroslav Táborský), but is informed that nothing much can be done. After this, he stumbles on Natalia and Svetlana at a non-tourist bar. They repeatedly insist he have a drink. He presses them for information on the whereabouts of his friends and he is told that Josh and Óli have gone to an art show. He demands to be taken there.

Natalia and an accomplice deliver Paxton to a disused factory. In the courtyard, drivers wait by several cars, apparently for the visitors to the "art show" (On the director's commentary for the unrated version of the DVD of this film, Eli Roth revealed that Takashi Miike travelled nine hours by plane to Prague to film his brief cameo appearance in this scene). Natalia lures him inside where he witnesses the Dutchman sewing up Josh's lifeless body. As Paxton confronts Natalia, he is grabbed by two thugs and dragged to a cell. Along the way, he sees others being tortured and brutalised in other cells. He is handcuffed to a chair and left to await his fate in the dark. Some time later, a German (Petr Janiš) enters the room and begins toying with Paxton using scissors and pliers, however he appears nervous and hesitant. The American begs in English first, then switches to German. His lines are not subtitled, but translate as "If you kill me, it'll destroy your life. Every time you close your eyes, you'll see me. I'll be in your nightmares every night, your whole life. I will ruin it." The torturer has him gagged and holds a gun to his head, but then sets the pistol aside. When Paxton begins to vomit, the German removes the gag and begins to menace him with a chainsaw. Paxton tries to bite his tormentor's fingers, but loses two of his own when the German accidentally cuts through the handcuffs. The torturer charges forward, slips on the blood and vomit and, in an allusion to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, severs his own leg. Paxton breaks free, retrieves the gun and kills the other man before calling out for a guard and shooting him also. He then attempts to escape from the factory, taking his severed fingers in his pocket.

Dressed in a surgeon's apron and horned helmet he finds in his cell, Paxton disguises himself as a torturer and flees. He comes upon a cart, piled with bodies, and hides himself under them. A butcher (Josef Bradna) takes the cart into the basement where the bodies are incinerated. Paxton's severed fingers fall out of his pocket and the butcher groups them together with other human remains. Paxton spots Josh’s corpse, incapacitates the butcher with a hammer and continues his escape. On an upper level of the building, he finds a locker room and looks out the window to see police officers talking to the men outside, bringing him to realisation that the police are part of the murder factory. He raids a locker and pulls on a suit and leather gloves to hide his mangled hand. In the pocket of the suit he finds a business card for "Elite Hunting". On the back of the card are handwritten prices for torture victims, ranging from $5000 for Russians to $25000 for Americans. Before he can leave, an American businessman (Rick Hoffman) arrives, and, believing Paxton to be another client, discusses his own victim and brings out a pistol he was given to "make it quick". When Paxton suggests he should do so, the other man disagrees, leaving the gun behind. Paxton claims it and escapes into the courtyard but before he can drive away he hears a woman scream. Earlier in the film, Paxton admitted to Josh that he was haunted by the scream of a mother who had found her child drowned and how he was powerless to help. Unable to ignore this scream, he returns to the factory and finds the American torturing Kana with a blowtorch to the face. He kills the man and saves the Japanese girl, whose injuries have resulted in her right eye being left hanging from the socket. In some cinematic releases of Hostel, this scene is edited to cut the shot of Paxton severing Kana's optic nerve with a pair of scissors. The shot was restored for the uncut DVD release.

Paxton and Kana steal a car and flee the factory, with two guards in pursuit. During the chase, the pair come upon Natalia, Svetlana and Alexi loitering in town. Paxton hits the gas pedal hard and runs them down apparently killing them instantly. A short time later, their car is brought to a halt by the street gang; however, Paxton bribes them with a bag of candy and the kids attack the couple's pursuers instead. Paxton and Kana escape to the railway station, where several police and thugs from the factory are waiting for them. The Japanese girl catches her reflection and decides to kill herself as Paxton looks for a way onto the waiting train without being noticed. In a virtual shot-for-shot recreation of the opening scene from the Japanese film Suicide Circle, Kana throws herself under a moving locomotive, creating the diversion necessary for Paxton to get away.

On the train, Paxton hears the familiar voice of Josh's torturer, the Dutch buisnessman. When he alights in Vienna, Austria, Paxton follows him to a public restroom, where he, enraged, cuts off two of the man's fingers to replace the two he lost, then puts his head in the toilet bowl before finally giving him a look at his killer before coldly cutting his throat and quickly leaving on the next train.

There are several references to classic European horror films of the 1970s in Hostel. The music played during the sex scene in the hostel is the Sneaker Pimps cover version of "How Do", the song (also known as "Willow's Song" and also covered by Doves) that is played during the nude dance in the 1973 British film The Wicker Man.

Although the film is set in Slovakia, the town in the film is actually Český Krumlov, a very popular tourist destination in the Czech Republic. In spite of its small size, Český Krumlov is popular with backpackers exploring the South Bohemian Region.

[edit] Cast

Chinese promotional poster

[edit] Reaction

The film scored a 59% “Rotten” rating at Rotten Tomatoes^[1] and an initial B- at Yahoo! Movies,^[2] a good showing for a horror film (By comparison, Saw only received a 45% “Rotten” rating,^[3] but also has a B- average at Yahoo!^[4]).

However, the film was not very well-received with audiences. It only has a 5.8 score on the Internet Movie Database, in contrast to Saw 's 7.6 average on the Database.^[5][6] Also, Yahoo! users give the film a C+, while Saw has a B average from Yahoo!'s users.^[7][8]

The film's opening weekend North American box office gross was $19.5 million,^[9] making it the top grossing film that weekend. And it went on to gross a total of $47.2 million. The film's budget was around $4.5 million.^[10]

Critical results were mixed, and the film received strong complaints from the country of Slovakia, which is depicted in the film. Slovak officials were disgusted by the film’s portrayal of their native country, claiming that it would “damage the good reputation of Slovakia” and would make foreigners feel that it was a dangerous place to be. Despite the fact that most of the movie is set in a small fictional location near Bratislava, Slovakia, actually not a single sequence was shot in Slovakia. The filming locations were at the Barrandov Studios, in Prague, Czech Republic. Barrandov has well-equipped sound stages, making it a popular choice for US productions set in Europe. 95% of the film was shot on location in and around Prague, and the stage was only used for the main torture rooms. Director Eli Roth said that the film was not meant to be offensive, but rather to point out “Americans' ignorance of the world around them.”^[11]

"Hostel" was praised in the summer 2006 issue of Artforum magazine, which called it "the smartest, most subversively political American film about American attitudes overseas."

[edit] Trivia

• At the end of the film, when Paxton arrives at the railway station in Vienna, there is a fictional billboard saying "jetz auch am dvd-grosse hits". In correct German it should read "Jetzt auch auf DVD — große Hits". The shot was actually done in Prague. Also, there are some signs in Czech.
• All the Dutch characters in the movie speak German instead of Dutch.
• Eli Roth made an uncredited appearance in the movie, playing an American stoner.^[12]
• The guards pursuing Paxton drove a Czech made Tatra T613 luxury car
• Two of the actors in the film, Jan Vlasák (Dutch businessman) and Miroslav Táborský (town police officer) previously starred together in the Dune miniseries as Mentat Thufir Hawat and Count Hasimir Fenring respectively.
• In the film the villain refers to his daughter as "Saskia." This is a reference to the film The Vanishing in which the kidnap victim's name is Saskia.

[edit] Sequel

Hostel: Part II is the upcoming thriller sequel to Hostel and on February 25, 2007, one of the movie posters was revealed on Bloody-Disgusting.com. The film is currently scheduled for release on June 8, 2007.

[edit] Controversy and criticism

The movie has been subject to harsh criticism in both Slovakia and in the Czech Republic. It portrays Slovakia as an undeveloped, poor and uncultured country suffering from high criminality, war, and prostitution. To many people, Hostel appears to be misplaced, both culturally and geographically. Slovakia is really in Central, rather than Eastern Europe^[13] and although the country has some underdeveloped regions, it hardly differs from any other Central or West European country. Roth claims he used Slovakia to point out the ignorance of Americans, and that the film is not meant to be an actual description. The tourist board of Slovakia invited Roth on an all-expense paid trip to their country so he could see it's not made up of run down factories and kids who kill for bubble gum.

The "local" songs in the film are 20 year old pop songs from Communist Czechoslovakia. The buildings, pubs, discos and other equipment do not reflect the reality - all cars shown in the film allegedly showing Slovakia are 20 to 30 year old cars that are not used anymore (Lada 2101, Volga M21, Tatra T613), the TV sets shown in the film have not been used since the 1960s in this region. According to himself, Roth very deliberately art directed the film this way to create a country that reflected American fears and stereotypes of Eastern Europe, not to show what the country actually looks like.^{[citation needed]}

The region of Bratislava, where the film is set, is the second most economically advanced region in whole Central and Eastern Europe (more prosperous than many regions in western Europe or the US (Bratislava (Economy)) and does not consist only of historic buildings and empty factories, as portrayed in the film.

Member of Parliament Tomas Galbavy recently commented about the film and said, "I am offended by this film. I think that all Slovaks should feel offended." In the same article, Roth has defended his work and commented "Americans do not even know that this country exists. My film is not a geographical work but aims to show Americans' ignorance of the world around them."^[14]

In defense, Roth said he did this intentionally to portray Slovakia as old stereotypes to represent the backpackers' general ignorance of their surroundings.^[15]

Roth has repeatedly pointed out in numerous interviews that despite many films in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre series, people still go to Texas^[16][17] - the second most populous and third fastest growing of all of the U.S. states - so the tourist board of Slovakia should not be concerned.

Hostel has also been subject to further criticism by film critics as sadistic and horrific beyond redemption regardless of Roth's excuses, often cited as an exemplification of the current shift of mainstream consciousness into the amusement of watching people suffer horrific deaths.

[edit] Rating

• Argentina - 17
• Australia - R18
• Belgium - KNT
• Brazil - 18
• Canada - 18
• Finland - 18
• France - 16
• Germany - 18
• Hong Kong - III (18 and above only)
• Hungary - 18
• Iceland - 16
• Italy - VM14
• Ireland - 18
• Malaysia - Banned
• Mexico - D (Passed the rating Adults Only)
• Netherlands - 16
• New Zealand - R18
• Norway - 18 (DVD rating of "20" as a PR stunt from the publisher, not an official rating.)
• Philippines - R18
• Portugal - M/18
• Singapore - R21 (The theatrical release is cut, and banned from video release.)
• South Africa - 16
• South Korea - 18 (cut)
• Spain - 18
• Sweden - 15
• United Kingdom - 18
• United States - R (There is also an unrated version available)

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Hostel

• Official site
• Hostel at the Internet Movie Database
• Hostel Fanlisting
• Time Out Set visit and Eli Roth interview
• Official site of Bratislava, capital of Slovakia
• Metacritic: Hostel
• Cast: Hostel
• "Hostel" review by Peter Bradshaw at Guardian Unlimited
• Coverage of Bratislava and Slovakia reactions