HOSTEL (2005)
There's a moment in Eli Roth's HOSTEL that I will never forget as a scene builds to an almost untenable point that truly disturbed me. So much so that, to this day, it's one of only two times in a movie theater that I've had to look away from the screen and tell my friend to let me know when it was over. Even 20 years ago I was fairly desensitized and difficult to scare...but Roth managed to do so on an incredibly deep level and that's a big part of why I will always hold HOSTEL close to my heart.
It's literally impossible to describe the plot of HOSTEL completely free of spoilers, so more than anything, I'd just recommend watching it. However, I'm assuming if you're still reading, you've either already seen it or don't much care about spoilers. Regardless, the basic plot of Roth’s film is Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and Josh (Derek Richardson) are backpacking through Europe, making memories before grad school and the standard life that follows. Along the way, they've made an Icelandic friend named Oli (Eyþór Guðjónsson) and after the three are kicked out of a bar and locked out of their hostel, they're introduced to a fellow traveler who tells them of another hostel in Slovakia that's filled with foreign girls who love Americans. Of course they make their way to said hostel and the pleasures that await.
Upon their arrival, they all meet girls, and everything seems great the next morning. Oli seems to have disappeared though. They spend the day looking for him to no avail, ultimately resign themselves to maybe not having known him as well as they thought and spend another night clubbing with the girls. Things quickly go wrong: Paxton gets locked in a storage room and passes out. Josh ends up in a dark, grungy room of his own to be senselessly tortured and finally murdered by a Dutch businessman they previously met in their travels. Paxton goes about trying to figure out what's happened to his friends and ultimately learns the truth about how his friends’ fates and the quaint town where they’ve been staying.
Honestly, maybe the ballsiest thing that Eli Roth did with HOSTEL is how he chose to structure it. As I briefly mentioned, before the film turns to horror, it's essentially a teen sex comedy. It's fun. When you're introduced to the three main characters, you instantly like Oli because he's funny. Josh seems like the nicest, sweetest guy. As the story progresses, that's confirmed. Paxton is kind of a douchebag. He's not completely without positive qualities but after Oli and Josh are taken off the board, you feel like you're stuck with Paxton as opposed to being the character you’d choose as the hero. It's up to Jay Hernandez's performance and Roth's direction to not only make you scared for him but to root for him. Surprisingly, it works.
There is quite a bit of dialogue that has not aged well and a lot of it wasn't okay even then. Most of it comes out of Paxton. making it easy to dislike the guy—though he's eventually made to be incredibly sympathetic. I feel like a lot of that credit goes to Hernandez: he may not be the greatest actor, or even be the best actor in this movie, but he brings a unique humanity to Paxton and his arc. In 90 minutes, he brings you from being an unlikeable, if begrudgingly charming, person to someone whose side you're completely on. It is an impressive feat.
Derek Richardson's performance as Josh is the heart of the movie, though. That's largely why his death at the midpoint of the film is such a shock. Richardson manages to do so much in the screentime he does have though. You're seeing a deeply insecure guy just trying to do the right thing finally come into his own and become the man he's destined to be almost in real time. It's almost ludicrous how much Richardson accomplishes with the character in so little time. However, what Guðjónsson does with even less is even more surprising, especially considering that he's not even a professional actor. He was just someone that Eli Roth met and thought his charisma and charm would be perfect in a film. Roth was spot on in that hypothesis. The character of Oli positively lights up the screen and owns the frame whenever he's present.
In the end, it all leads back to Eli Roth. I was already a fan of Roth as I loved his first film, CABIN FEVER, but, walking into HOSTEL, I had no idea of his true capabilities. Sure, a lot of the dialogue between the two movies are similar and both from the same tonal perspective but that's pretty much where the comparisons end. HOSTEL came out within a year of SAW leading to both sharing credit for the creation of the “torture porn” subgenre that followed—but HOSTEL is in a class of its own due to its dedication to character. Most entries in the so-called subgenre fail because a lot of filmmakers seemed to learn the wrong lessons from the originators: the horror comes from the characters you care about and in whom you become invested as they face gruesome acts, not just the atrocities themselves.
That's Eli Roth's strongest suit in general.
Even the movies he's made that I haven't liked as much (or, in some cases, at all) still have an attention to character that makes these roles memorable and distinguishable.
Because, yeah, a scene like Josh's death would be horrifying regardless but it's truly unsettling because of how much Roth has done to make you care about him. That's why that moment disturbed me while most “torture porn” does not—it's generally just kind of gross stuff happening in a vacuum.
When HOSTEL ended, I left the theater and told my friend that I don't think I could ever watch it again. He said the same. Yet as soon as we saw each other the next day, we were making plans to see it again. This might be the best description of what it's like to be a horror fan. You're hooked from a young age and from that point, you're trying to find something that affects you the same way. It almost never does. HOSTEL was an exception and still stands up as a singular piece of horror even during an era where the market could not have been more cluttered. Hell, even as it was ripped apart and ripped off in that era...it still managed to stand out and be remembered. In the field of 2000s era of horror, it's as landmark a piece of work as THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE was in the '70s or A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET was in the '80s. A legitimate horror classic. Often imitated, never duplicated.
