Not a Hostile Hostel (Quentin Tarantino Presents: Hostel (DVD))

Member Name: IainWear

Product:	Quentin Tarantino Presents: Hostel (DVD)
Date:	29/04/06 (211 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Some nice touches in the editing

Disadvantages: Not too many nice touches elsewhere

Opposites attract, or so they say. It may or may not be true, but it would explain how I, as a fan of comedy films, ended up dating a horror film fan. I suppose it could have been worse – she could have liked chick flicks.

Having heard a lot about it, she was very keen to see “Hostel”, as she had quite enjoyed his previous film, 2002’s “Cabin Fever”. That was a film that was praised and abused in almost equal measure, but she had liked it enough to want to see “Hostel”. Even more so having heard a rumour that it might be too gory for the censors.

“You don’t have to watch it with me”, she said. “We can see something else”. This last delivered with a certain look that told me I would be sleeping on the sofa if we didn’t go to see it.

Expecting a night of horror and tension…from sleeping on the sofa and being jumped on by the cat, I agreed to see the film. I went with more than a little nervousness, however, given that the bloodiest and most tense thing I have watched over the last few years is coverage of WWE wrestling.

The film starts with two American back packers, Paxton and Josh, and their Icelandic companion Oli, having the times of their lives in Amsterdam. Wherever they go, they seem to be surrounded by drugs, women or sex. Or, in some cases, all three at once. It’s a young man’s paradise and Paxton and Oli particularly are living the dream.

One night, having been locked out of their Amsterdam hostel, they meet a fellow traveller who tells them of a hostel where there are even more women and sex on tap. This being a shared interest, they take his advice and head off to Bratislava in Slovakia in search of the beautiful and sexually uninhibited women he spoke of.

Within minutes of their arrival at the hostel, they find what they seek in the forms of Natalya and Svetlana, who they meet for the first and second times in a state of undress. The women seem to know the town, so the boys follow along for what promises to be the night of their lives. And indeed it is, until they wake up the following morning to find that Oli has gone. From here, their stay at the hostel takes a much darker turn.

Not being a horror fan, I was expecting to be scared and grossed out in pretty much equal measure throughout the film. Instead, what I ended up being mostly was pretty bored. Fortunately, at only 95 minutes, I wasn’t bored for all that long.

Admittedly, there were some fairly decent parts, but these were mostly right towards the end of the film. Perhaps I was expecting too much, but a supposed horror film that makes a non-horror fan jump only once and think “Ewww!” twice, isn’t really the gore fest that established horror fans might be after.

It may be that I was expecting too much, not having much experience of horror films either good or bad to draw on, but the film didn’t even come close to delivering. There was very little tension at any point and even as the bloodiest of scenes flashed before your eyes, there was little to suggest that the characters involved were in a great amount of danger and when they were in danger, there seemed to be slightly less blood and gore involved and certainly not enough to scare or disgust.

The reason for this disappointment can be laid firmly at the door of Eli Roth’s story. The first part of the film is more like a teenage sex comedy, like the “American Pie” franchise, or maybe something like “Porky’s”, even down to the clichéd combination of characters. This not only gives you a misleading impression of the film itself for the first half an hour, but if that kind of film isn’t to your personal taste, you won’t be enjoying yourself.

I suspect that the whole idea was to make you feel more sympathy for the characters so you would care more when the horror began. However, I just wasn’t feeling anything for them, the three men not being especially likeable or much special. Perhaps they were trying to build up the tension before a blood fest and lull the audience into a false sense of security. I suppose that’s possible, but for me, both the tension and the blood failed to arrive in large enough quantities to get me interested again.

It’s a shame, as there’s not really too much wrong with the individual parts of the film. Bratislava itself is a decent setting, being a fairly pretty setting, with some dark undertones that make it perfect for this type of film. There is also some very nice editing, with some cuts from one scene to another apparently very well thought out and presented. There are some decent scenes here and there, but there aren’t enough of them to really make for a good film as a whole.

The acting is nothing special, but is adequate enough, although it does seem a little stilted in parts. There are really no terrifying performances and no-one especially convinces as being the villain of the piece. The three men seem happier as teen-sex movie actors, particularly Eythor Gudjonsson as Oli, who seems to be having fun, although that is about the extent of what he is asked to do. Jay Hernandez as Paxton and Derek Richardson as Josh have more to show, but don’t ever really convince you that they are supposed to be in danger or in great pain.

There is not much required of the female characters other than to take their clothes off and look pretty. Admittedly, they do manage that, but later scenes suggest that Jana Kaderabkova was chosen for the role of Svetlana more for the acting abilities of her breasts than for anything else. Barbara Nedeljakova as Natalya has more to do and is more convincing as someone who might be in league with evil, although her lack of experience does show a little. The main evil character, Jan Vlasak’s Dutch businessman comes across as a little more naturally evil, but only in comparison to what he is up against, which says very little. Indeed, the groups of street children are more likely to induce fear than he is at many points.

I can see that there is potentially a good film inside “Hostel” trying to get out, but it is never really allowed to. The basic idea isn’t a bad one, if a little predictable, but it does get dragged down by the opening half hour, which is pretty much all cliché and, to make it worse, a cliché borrowed from another genre. It’s a film that you can rest your eyes on for a little while, but never really enthrals or entertains.

I certainly did not feel that I got value for my £6 cinema ticket for this film. If you do still want to watch it, I would recommend a rental when it becomes available, or borrowing a copy from someone else, as it’s definitely not worth a DVD purchase. Indeed, it’s barely worth the price of a DVD rental, as lame as it is.

I’ll freely admit I may have walked into the cinema with my expectations too high and I might have enjoyed it a little more had I not been contemplating a night of sheer horror. But even so, I would have expected more from any supposed horror film than “Hostel” delivered.

Summary: A Slovakian hostel holds many secrets, none of them worth knowing