Harry chimes in on Eli Roth's HOSTEL!

Harry here. I’ve stayed fairly quiet on the whole release of HOSTEL, even though everytime I turn around I hear or see Eli Roth talking about how I inspired him to come up with HOSTEL in our very first phone conversation about 4 months before CABIN FEVER premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. The conversation was essentially two horror geeks talking about the most fucked up things they’d ever come across online. Now the site I sent him to has been offline for a couple of years and I swear it was in the Philippines, though Eli swears it was in Thailand. I can’t remember – but the conversation turned very dark as we discussed it and the idea stuck with Eli.

That’s basically all I had to do with the film. The initial spark. Having said that, I have to say when I saw the film at FANTASTIC FEST last year (strange saying that) – what I saw was so far and above what I was expecting to see from Eli, that it was like a sledgehammer to the forehead – forcing me to reconsider what I thought he was capable of. I like Eli, he kinda strikes me as that Frat Guy that for whatever reason wasn’t a freak over sports, but instead went ape shit over horror. BUT – after talking to Eli prior to seeing CABIN FEVER – I thought he had the potential to be a better filmmaker than he was, simply out of the passion he had for the genre.

I like CABIN FEVER, but I don’t love it. The film is tonally all over the place, a hodge podge of Eli’s love for the teen sex comedies, his love of horror and the strange esoteric weirdness he picked up being David Lynch’s assistant. Personally I feel it is a fun film, but that in its descent into the darker aspects of the film, it approached something that could have been great. Ultimately it was the first work of an immature filmmaker that showed signs of one day growing up.

He grew up.

I was shocked by HOSTEL. Shocked because frankly it is vastly better than anything I thought Eli would turn out for years. I’ve seen people that call this his Miike film, and definitely Miike is an influence. I’ve seen others call this the first American Giallo film, and you could see that here.

Instead – What I honestly feel Eli has done is by combining up aspects of Giallo, Miike and his own American sensibilities – I feel HOSTEL has the potential to be something I call GORE NOIR.

A lot of what happens in this film plays by the classic rules of Film Noir. This is far removed from the world of Raymond Chandler and those dime backs, but like those pulpy stories – this is a film about basic people descending into their own depravity only to find the pool they're diving into is bottomless with a current that will take all who dive down into its inky blackness never to emerge.

On the surface this is a story about two Americans and their European friend they made along the way seeking to fuck and enjoy the “decadence” of Europe. For the two American characters – this is their last vacation before the plunge into the all consuming hell that is seeking one’s law degree. They’ve traveled to where nobody knows their names or their faces. Where what happens doesn’t matter in their own personal real worlds. They go where most young Americans feel getting laid and high is the easiest thing to do, Amsterdam. However, they realize that it is actually a bit touristy, that their money won’t stretch there – and they meet this guy that has the answer to their European Fuck Fantasy dreams. He tells them the tale, much like Honest John in PINNOCHIO, about a place that might as well be PLEASURE ISLAND – it’s a Hostel in this Eastern European country where all the men or a majority of them were killed off in civil strife – and these gorgeous European women are just dying for all-American cock. And it’s free.

The honey has been laid out – and these three are swooping in for the licks. The town they find themselves in is startlingly beautiful. It feels like it pops out of PINNOCHIO when you get the first reveal. But as you continue to explore it, the vision of blissful Old European charm turns to Industrial decay. When they arrive at the hostel, they find it unlike any hostel they’ve stayed at. This is a bit of paradise. The only downpoint is they’ll have to share their room with two other folks staying there. Our femme fatales. Barbara Nedeljakova is an awesome femme fatale. She’s incredibly hot and completely open sexually. She is absolutely willing to fuck you like you’ve never been fucked before. She’s got good drugs and a gorgeous bisexual girlfriend that will share with you. The trap is set.

That all of this is a front for something horribly wrong, is obvious from the trailers, and folks that think that this film is nothing but torture porn – are so far off base it isn’t funny. Despite the visual depravity of what you’ll see if you see HOSTEL, this is, like classic Film Noir, very moralistic.

Those that have sinned are punished. This is an unrelenting film, when it is time for these characters to pay the piper – this isn’t woo-hoo clap clap violence, this is leave you shaking violence. At the screening at FANTASTIC FEST – folks were seen visibly shook by what they saw. And frankly – as a gore aficionado – this is no where near the “hardest” film I’ve seen. It did get an R-rating after all. But what is affecting is the emotions and the fact that at some point in this film – Jay Hernandez’s character of Paxton is no longer an amoral American out to get his rocks off, but is instead a really scared and concerned friend trying desperately to find out what happened to his best friend that he platonically loved. And he is so far out of his element, he doesn’t know what to do.

I have to say, I was rooting for Eli to make a few steps forward as a filmmaker – but this film – feels like a bad trip down the wrong river in Arkansas. These aren’t Boy Scouts – these are Ugly Americans that discover there’s something a lot more ugly and sick and depraved than they ever thought of.

This is a very scary and more than that, disturbing film. Personally – I haven’t been all that happy with the selling of the film. They are selling this movie like a snuff flick – sadly apparently that is how you appeal to America’s audience for horror. You’re not getting any of the set up for the film. There’s nothing to give you a sense of the MIDNIGHT EXPRESS terror that’s to come.

Eli has made a film that is absolutely brutal and oddly brilliant in how he took that initial premise and made a film that is very much a moralistic study of our own amorality and the inevitable day that those in pursuit of that next big kick will find their own exploitation and their own nightmares realized in payment.

Disney told this tale with PINNOCHIO. It was about a boy, that represented all of us - he decided to shirk responsibilities and instead listened to base suggestions to "enjoy himself." Ultimately ending up at the greatest no price fun park in the world. But those boys paid a price – seeing those little boys turned into jackasses and whipped within an inch of their lives as their human screams turned to animal screams – the lesson was that every sin has its payment, every pleasure its price. This isn’t a film for children, but it is a film for those big ugly kids that exploit those in far off lands.

This is a great American horror film. And the arrival of a very dangerous filmmaker. I’ll be fascinated to see what he does next.