• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Hostel

M

Mighty_Emperor

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 18, 2002
Messages
19,407
Hostel (2005)

www.imdb.com/title/tt0450278/

Written & Directed by Eli Roth, Presented by Quentin Tarantino, HOSTEL is a mixture of many of the most terrifying things about human nature and the world at large, culled from many impossible-but-true stories of human trafficking, international organized crime, and sex tourism. Relentlessly graphic and deeply disturbing, the film is sure to shock even the most hardcore horror genre fans. HOSTEL tells the story of two American college buddies Paxton and Josh who backpack through Europe eager to make hazy travel memories with new friend Oli, an Icelander they’ve met along the way. Paxton, Josh, and Oli are eventually lured by a fellow traveler to what’s described as a nirvana for American backpackers – a particular hostel in an out-of-the-way Slovakian town stocked with Eastern European women as desperate as they are gorgeous. The two friends arrive and soon easily pair off with exotic beauties Natalya and Svetlana. In fact, too easily… Initially distracted by the good time they’re having, the two friends quickly find themselves trapped in an increasingly sinister situation that they will discover is as wide and as deep as the darkest, sickest recess of human nature itself – if they survive.
Click to expand...

www.bloody-disgusting.com/film/684
 
Word is that this is one of the most horrific, disturbing movies of the last few years.

Can't wait!
 
hokum6 said:
Word is that this is one of the most horrific, disturbing movies of the last few years.

Can't wait!
Click to expand...

Yeah although none of the precis go into too much details I believe:

spoiler

It plunges into the world of people trafficking and then into a twilight world were people are killed over the Net for money in unpleasant ways.

/spoiler
 
Damn. For a moment there I thought it was going to be a film about that place we stayed at at Uncon last year :eek!!!!:
 
SoundDust said:
Damn. For a moment there I thought it was going to be a film about that place we stayed at at Uncon last year :eek!!!!:
Click to expand...

Too scary - they'd never allow it on the silver screen ;)
 
SoundDust said:
Damn. For a moment there I thought it was going to be a film about that place we stayed at at Uncon last year :eek!!!!:
Click to expand...

Aparently the generator hostel is haunted, I was getting ready for bed in the haunted bog and bent over to pick up my clothes when I'd finished and damn near jumped out of my skin when this action tripped the light sensor on a hand drier. :oops:
 
Menawhile back at the topic ;)

December 19: Eli Roth talks HOSTEL DVD plans

When Eli Roth’s gruesome sophomore effort HOSTEL is released January 6, audiences will be assaulted by one helluva ending. But when the fans pick up the DVD sometime next year, they’ll be treated to…two.

As is the case with many productions passing through the studio pipeline on their way to a theatrical bow, work on HOSTEL’s DVD debut is already underway. However, Roth tells Fango that viewers may have to wait a spell before sinking their teeth into a meaty disc loaded with extras, including a different finale that was filmed and subsequently dropped in favor of a bloodier end. It’s one of three conclusions Roth kicked around; the first reportedly never made it past the screenwriting process, being deemed too explicit and bleak by the film’s producing team, including Quentin Tarantino.)

“I wanted to do the alternate ending as a DVD special, and I don’t think they’re going to release that just yet,” Roth says. “First we’ll have the theatrical movie with just bonus features, then somewhere down the road they want to do a special-edition director’s cut with the original ending on it. I didn’t want that conclusion to be an extra; I’d like to watch the movie with it added on.”

Roth confesses that outside of this major addition to the film, expect little in the way of extended gore scenes. Not only was he able to squeak by the MPAA with an R rating, he was lucky enough to put into the film everything he had intended—which posed something of a predicament. “Honestly, everything I shot made it into the movie,” he reveals. “When we got our R so easily, the studio said, ‘Well, what are we going to put on the unrated DVD?’ It was a really good question, ‘cause I had no idea! We’ll have scenes that are really great that, for one reason or another, just found their way to the cutting room floor.

“The thing that’s frustrating,” he continues, “is that Sony is releasing the DVD, not [theatrical distributor] Lionsgate, so we’re running into these issues with the legal department of what we can put in our behind-the-scenes piece. Sony is a big corporation, and you have to be careful about certain things. So it’s really frustrating that my brother did this kick-ass behind-the-scenes feature, and lot of my favorite bits are getting cut out of it because Sony’s afraid of getting sued.”

Given Tarantino’s participation with HOSTEL, one has to wonder if Roth has had any talks with the KILL BILL director about GRIND HOUSE, a genre-film collaboration with SIN CITY’s Robert Rodriguez that will be told in two parts and feature faux exploitation previews between the segments. “Of course I’ve talked to Quentin; I’m very excited to see what those guys do with GRIND HOUSE,” Roth says enthusiastically. “I’m sure I’ll find my way on set with a camera in one way or another.” —Ryan Rotten
Click to expand...

www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=5294

Grind House discussion:
www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24368
 
Saw Hostel last nite. It delivered the goods. It is a huge step up from Cabin Fever. I knew I was in for something when I noticed that they were actually checking ID's to see if people were really of age.

I read that there was an alternate ending but tests audience found it so upsetting that they changed it to the present one.

I counted 4 people that walked out and not out of boredom like in Wolf Creek.
 
Its doing well in the box office too:

January 8: HOSTEL travels to $20-million weekend gross

Various sources have reported that Eli Roth's Lionsgate release HOSTEL chainsawed the competition in its first weekend, grossing an estimated $20.1 million at 2,195 theaters (final figures will be announced Monday afternoon). In so doing, HOSTEL pulled in just a hair less than the entire box-office total for Roth and Lionsgate's CABIN FEVER, which wound up with $21.2 million after opening to $8.6 million on 2,087 screens in September 2003. The news is especially sweet for Lionsgate, which doesn't have video rights to HOSTEL; Sony Pictures, whose Screen Gems division produced the film, will release it to the home market later this year. Meanwhile, BLOODRAYNE became the third Uwe Boll flop in a row; final figures weren't in at this writing, but based on a Friday gross of $450,000 at 985 theaters (about half the number originally announced by distributor RoMar Entertainment), the video-game adaptation looks headed for a weekend tally of about $1.3 million. Variety reports that hundreds of movie houses received BLOODRAYNE prints from RoMar that they hadn't actually ordered, and refused to show them.

Meanwhile, Universal's KING KONG came in third for the weekend, taking in an estimated $12.5 million for a total of $192.5 million. While it hasn't lived up to prerelease expectations that it would do LORD OF THE RINGS or even TITANIC-sized business, Peter Jackson's monster epic is headed toward a U.S. total north of $225 million and a worldwide figure of around $600 million. —Michael Gingold
Click to expand...

www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=5366
 
January 10: Eli Roth going back to the HOSTEL

After the smash opening box-office weekend for HOSTEL (final tally: $19.6 million), it’s no surprise that Variety reports a sequel is in the works. Writer/director Eli Roth is in talks to return on the follow-up, which, like the original film, will be released by Lionsgate but produced by Screen Gems, which will retain international theatrical and U.S. home video rights. Plans are to get the second HOSTEL into theaters a year from now (similar to the successful turnaround on Lionsgate’s SAW sequel); producers Mike Fleiss and Chris Biggs are also in discussions to encore. Executive producer/presenter Quentin Tarantino’s involvement is still a question mark. —Michael Gingold
Click to expand...

www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=5377
 
The grumpy man from the Garudian he say...:

Hostel

* (Cert 18)

Peter Bradshaw
Friday March 24, 2006
The Guardian


A couple of years ago there emerged a moderate frat-boy comedy called EuroTrip, and it had one good gag. A bunch of American teen backpackers in Europe, finding themselves in a godforsaken post-Soviet hellhole and discovering that they are all out of local currency, pool whatever American cash they have on them. It comes to around a dollar and 13 cents. "What can you get here for that?" ponders one, peering round at the wrecked municipal housing and the rabid dogs scavenging in corners. Cut to: an absurdly lavish private room in something that looks like a 19th-century brothel, with our smirking heroes about to get the best of everything, including champagne and women.

My theory is that the makers of this film saw EuroTrip and thought: hmmmmmm, why don't we remake this as humourless soft-porn horror? And while we're about it, why don't we steal the opening idea from The Beach? The result is a film called Hostel, a title I can't read without remembering William Boyd's remark in Stars and Bars about it being the way Americans pronounce the word "hostile". It has been heavily touted as the last - or at any rate the latest word - in ordeal horror, executive produced by no less a person than Quentin Tarantino, but it's actually silly, crass and queasy. And not in a good way.

A couple of American guys and their wacky Icelandic buddy come to sunny Slovakia because they're told the local hot babes will screw anyone from the US of A - but their quest to get laid ends in some deplorable dungeon with a very unsexy Slovakian bloke cranking up the chainsaw. (Needless to say, the Slovakian tourist board is less than happy about the way its fair land is represented, although I rather think that Hostel will do the tourist industry no harm at all.) As in The Beach, our heroes hear about this fabled land of limitless shags from some dodgy bloke in a hotel.

It is at this point that the screenplay does something very strange: something that insults Slovakia far more than fat locals applying medieval tongs to tourists' toes. The horny backpackers' informant tells them that the reason the women are so sex starved in Slovakia is that there are very few males - "because of the war". Uh ... what war would that be, bro? It can't be the second world war. It can't be Vietnam. It can't be the current Iraq war, nor the gulf war of 1991. And, as it happens, the Czech Republic split with Slovakia in 1993 with a remarkable lack of acrimony and bloodshed. No the "war" must presumably refer to the Balkan war of the 1990s. You don't suppose that writer-director Eli Roth is getting muddled up with, ahem, Slovenia, do you? It's too embarrassing to think about. Unless this is a super-subtle satire - part of a larger macrocosm of super-subtle satire - taking the mickey out of America's concept of abroad.

How I wish it were so. At any rate, Paxton (Jay Hernandez), Josh (Derek Richardson) and Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson) arrive in Slovakia, check in at the local hostel and are immediately bidden by some delicious temptresses to join them in the "spa" which turns out to be a gigantic facility worthy of a five-star hotel, and populated entirely by underwear models sans underwear. The place is so wildly over-the-top that at first I thought it was a deliberate homage to EuroTrip, or the fantasy women's locker-room scene from Road Trip. But no: it's deadly serious, and I mean deadly.

The guys get their sexual touchdown, but then the full horror begins to dawn: the women are honey-trap bait for a horrifying torture ring. There is a very silly cameo by the cult Japanese director Takashi Miike, whose torture-classic Audition is evidently admired by Roth. But Audition is a genuine political satire, brilliantly constructed and with a level of imagination, psychological acuity and hardcore provocation that goes way beyond Hostel, whose attempts at black comedy fall with a dull thud, like one of the many dismembered limbs.

This film has nothing to compare with the recent Australian horror Wolf Creek or the American freakout spectacular Saw or the French nightmare Tzameti. What it has is gallons of gore and great-looking guys getting it on with great-looking women who are moralistically revealed later to look much less hot without their makeup. It's a bit of a DVD rental - and depressingly yucky.
Click to expand...

http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/C ... 61,00.html
 
Went to see it thisafternoon, i'd call this one a bit of a mixed bag.

The first 3rd of the film doesn't really do much besides introducing the characters. I don't know if they look better if you're young, male or American but for the most part i found them hard to like and harder to care if they were going to get their knackers chainsawed off at some point. Too sleezy in a juvenile kind of way, like if i'd met them for real i'd file them as creeps.

2nd third was pretty tedious apart from a couple of :shock: moments, and narked me by including a 'dance' remix/cover? of Willow's Song (From The Wicker Man) accompanying a sex scene.

Last 3rd is actually pretty good, some impressively :shock: ultraviolence, and a good sense of tension to it, it really picks up once we get to see the torture rooms and then the escape from them. The finale's maybe a little bleak and understated, but suits the film well. Pity we couldn't have got to the good stuff sooner...
 
yeah, went to see it last night and imdb's 6(ish) out of 10 seems a little on the high side.

Agree with BRF's comments above. All the characters are difficult to find a scrap of empathy, antagonist and protagonist alike. Well into half way through the film, nothing has really happened. The sex and nudity is flat and boring. The dialogue, although possibly accurate, seems contrived and repetitive.

It has one or two moments that redeem it from total dross,but it is unlikely to warrant a dvd purchase (or even 2nd viewing). If you want a movie that shows human brutality, occuring to people you are interested in, watch "irreversible". If you just like torture on celluloid, watch "men behind the sun", or "human pork chop". They, at least, provide a genuine intellectual response.

Hostel ultimately is like meeting an American backpacker touring Europe. At the time they may say or think things that shock you momentarily, but after a week or two - totally forgotten... 5/10
 
I nearly asked for my money back after seeing this. I thought it was dismal, utterly witless, crass and without any of the skill of Saw or The Decent.
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
2nd third was pretty tedious apart from a couple of :shock: moments, and narked me by including a 'dance' remix/cover? of Willow's Song (From The Wicker Man) accompanying a sex scene.
Click to expand...

That's track 11 from the Sneaker Pimps debut album from 1999...


LOVED Hostel BTW...
 
*Shakes head*

Xenophobic, gratutiously violent and very guilty of believing it is much cleverer than it actually is. Hypocritical in the way it points and tuts at commoditisation of sex and death in modern society then shows both in voyeristic detail for the viewer at home.

Not sure if Eli Roth the writer / director is trying to put some gore back into horror after the sanitised horror of Scream et al or is paying some form of homage to the video nasties or even to HG Lewis, either way it just seems to wallow in a muddy puddle of it's own sadistic excesses.

SPOILER BELOW:

The final murder of the carnivore surgeon in the public toilet is presumably Roth's demonstration of the protagonist's final decent into sadism and murder because of the desenitising effects of his experiences. Also presumably we are supposed to conclude that by extension the reason why the Slovakians all collude in the crimes is due to their desenitisation in the war, or perhaps because as seems to be suggested, all foreigners are basically without morals?

On the upside, the acting is good throughout, good use of location photography and the cinematography is appropriately gritty.

If it hadn't taken itself so seriously and hadn't felt the need to linger quite so closely on every single abuse of the protagonists I might have liked it more, as it is I'd have to give it a big thumbs down.

BTW I wonder if the use of Willow's Song from the Wicker Man was deliberate, there are similarities, Protagonists on a pre-determined path from the very beginning, conspirital locals? If Roth is making comparisons I would have to say he has a lot of growing up to do before he could write something of the same quality as Anthony Shaeffer.
 
A trailer for this claimed it was based on true events- was this actually the case, or is it just hype? Or is it just based on vague urban myths like snuff movies?
 
xTowerKingx said:
A trailer for this claimed it was based on true events- was this actually the case, or is it just hype? Or is it just based on vague urban myths like snuff movies?
Click to expand...

Erm really? :?

Are you sure you're not thinking of Wolf Creek?
 
Oh I just noticed this on one of the User comments on IMDB:

In a Q+A after the film, director Eli Roth said that he had the films "Wicker Man" and "Audition" in mind when he made "Hostel."
Click to expand...

Source

Evidently the Wicker Man Sound-track was deliberate.

Looks the sequel is already green-lighted :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498353/

Perhaps they'll torture the director this time?
 
Heckler20 said:
xTowerKingx said:
A trailer for this claimed it was based on true events- was this actually the case, or is it just hype? Or is it just based on vague urban myths like snuff movies?
Click to expand...

Erm really? :?

Are you sure you're not thinking of Wolf Creek?
Click to expand...

I also saw advertising for Hostel saying it was "based on a true story", but only a few times. I looked on the IMDB forums and amongst the surreal, rambling posts it appears that the director/etc. found a website once that claimed to offer such services and it might have been a hoax, and that's where the "true story" comes from. I'm pretty sure I've seen such hoaxes before, generally fairly obvious ones (although I would assume on average that directors/etc. would be as naive as the next person when it comes to the internet, e.g. bonsai kittens). Never heard of "Wolf Creek".

I like the Sneaker Pimps though, I didn't know where track 11 came from before now so that's interesting :)

Also didn't go and actually see Hostel as it looks like tripe designed to shock.
 
Electric_Monk said:
I also saw advertising for Hostel saying it was "based on a true story", but only a few times. I looked on the IMDB forums and amongst the surreal, rambling posts it appears that the director/etc. found a website once that claimed to offer such services and it might have been a hoax, and that's where the "true story" comes from..
Click to expand...

Oh right, yeah you would assume it was a hoax as presumably advertising a service like that for real would be a little inadvisible. :D

It has be said that the majority of posters on IMDB are of the rampant rambling type along with every other post from some pre-pubescent type calling the above poster 'gay'.
 
I was actually quite happy when the killing started, the characters were so bloody annoying that I found myself hoping the guy at the end wouldn't escape.

I liked the fact that the Americans were so expensive, presumably in high demand ;).

Dismayed, yet not surprised to see that according to this film, there only exist three types of people in the world; Americans, Europeans and Russians. So where exactly did the Asian girl come into it. Maybe it was a buy one, get one free sort of thing.
 
Xenophobic, gratutiously violent and very guilty of believing it is much cleverer than it actually is. Hypocritical in the way it points and tuts at commoditisation of sex and death in modern society then shows both in voyeristic detail for the viewer at home.
Click to expand...

Yeah :( I wasn't in a great frame of mind when i went to see it, so i was trying to go easy on it in case it was just me.

I can't work out where the director's trying to pitch the first half of the film, the sex scenes weren't particularly erotic or for that matter anything much, the drugtaking was similarly bland, and i'm sure anyone who's ever taken a walk around the red light district of Amsterdam or gone in a coffee shop has seen worse for real.

Think the characters got burnt on their deal too, those Es they took didn't like anywhere near homemade enough to be convincing :D


The final murder of the carnivore surgeon in the public toilet is presumably Roth's demonstration of the protagonist's final decent into sadism and murder because of the desenitising effects of his experiences.
Click to expand...

I think that might be reading a bit much into it, suspect it was more of a strightforward revenge ending.


A trailer for this claimed it was based on true events
Click to expand...

It says that on the trailer for Scary Movie 4 too :shock: :D


In a Q+A after the film, director Eli Roth said that he had the films "Wicker Man" and "Audition" in mind when he made "Hostel."
Click to expand...

The eyeball cutting scene could have been straight out of a Takeshi Miike movie, poss. the use of a Jap. character was a tipped hat to him, beyond that, it's a pity a bit more of Miike's style didn't rub off on this one.


Btw, I'm absolutely convinced i've seen the 'slips with chainsaw and slices self up' scene before, can't place the movie though - anyone care to enlighten me?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top