Newsfeed
Printer-Friendly ModeHostel full of vulgarities, lacks character development
January 16, 2006 —
Sex and violence, those nightmares of parents, are rarely seen as explicitly and frequently as in Hostel. Here is a movie where nudity is all that can be remembered of its first half, and brutal and sadistic killings are all that can be remembered of its second half. These things alone do not make a good movie, and it is possible for them to ruin a good movie. They do not make Hostel a movie worth seeing, and there does not appear to be much of a good movie behind these extreme sights.
At the start of the movie we are introduced to three people vacationing in Europe. Josh (Derek Richardson) and Paxton (Jay Hernandez) are students from the United States, while Oli (Eythor Gudjonssen) is from Iceland. Josh and Paxton know each other from back home, and apparently met up with Oli at some point on their journey. We are treated to several tedious scenes of the trio's attempts, successes and failures at procuring female company, which border on the repulsive. Most of the time they are portrayed as mindless walking hormones, save for Josh, who appears to still be getting over his girlfriend from back home. Josh is the only one at this point showing any depth to his character whatsoever, and when the greatest character depth in the movie is someone missing his girlfriend, my Bad Movie Detector starts to give me warnings.
However, after meeting a particularly seedy character in Amsterdam who had some interesting pictures of himself surrounded by beautiful (nude, always nude in this movie) women, they are convinced to venture to the Hostel he tells them they were at, in an unnamed Slovakian town. The next scene appropriately shows them traveling there by train, and after departing the train and traveling by taxi through some questionable and nearly deserted territory, they arrive at the city, a seeming oasis amongst the desolation surrounding it. The Hostel is here.
The Hostel seems to be heaven for those who want to be naked and look at naked people all day, and only Josh appears a bit uncomfortable. He shows some desire for intellectual conversation after they meet a woman from Prague: "Prague's cool...Kafka...", but trails off and never gets to pursue it. Here we are shown a lot of sex, and then some more sex, followed by some sex. Eventually (finally) things begin to seem amiss, after Oli turns up missing. We are shown omnisciently that he has met a grisly demise. Shortly thereafter, one of our American friends, I will not reveal who, is taken.
At this point the movie becomes violent, extremely violent. A word of warning: if explicit torture, some of which we see, some of which we hear, is not something you can tolerate, do not see this movie. Actually, unless you have a real penchant for gory and depressing movies, there is no need to see Hostel.
Hostel gets two stars rather than one or even zero, for a couple of reasons. One is that the movie is shot extremely well. The camerawork is very effective in this movie, and it does add to the movie.
The other reason is that, late in the film, rarely does an audience wish more strongly for the protagonist to succeed. Regardless of my feelings toward the character, I was sympathetic, and just wanted him to get out of there. At this level, the movie was a big success, but it needed to do more than that. Is the movie frightening? Not really. The part of the movie that is supposed to scare seems so unlikely that I was not moved - I don't believe that enough people would be willing to be part of such a terrible thing for it to succeed.
I admit that in a movie set up in this fashion, it is difficult to establish much in the way of character depth, but I missed it regardless and also wanted to know more about the motives of the antagonists. I watched The Silence of the Lambs a few nights ago, and it was a reminder of what makes a movie truly thrilling. It is not this.