Hostel

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By Todd Karella
January 6, 2006

Rated-R

~ Not quite so Hostile ~

Once again an audience was tricked into seeing a movie thinking it was directed by Quentin Tarantino only to find his name is on it for no other reason than pure marketing value.
While the film opened at the number one position at the box office, it really

didn’t deserve it. The only reason it did was because of name recognition.
   Overall, the film was a hodgepodge of styles. It’s as if the writers weren’t sure if it should be a teen summer break film, a horror flick, or an action movie. Unfortunately, it was marketed more as a horror fest, which was only a slight portion of the film.
   The film was about two best friends backpacking through Europe before they had to return home and go on to college. Josh (Derek Richardson) has just broken up with his girlfriend and is just trying to put the past behind him. His friend, Paxton (Jay Hernandez), is the wild and rowdy one, who flies by the seat of his pants and spends more time on partying and trying to get his best friend to forget about the breakup and move on by getting laid as many times as possible.
   During their travels they run into Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson), a fellow backpacker from Iceland and the dumb but loveable sidekick. And he’s even hornier than the other two.

After having been out all night partying and hooking up with prostitutes, the three return to their hostel in Amsterdam to find themselves locked out after curfew. The neighbors scream at them for making too much noise as they try to get in, but one person decides to let them inside.
While talking to this strange man with a giant sore on his lip, they find out some interesting information. There is a Hostel in Slovakia where they can fulfill any sexual desire they have with beautiful

women.
   Since the film is still in the “spring break” mind set, the three hop on the nearest train to the Ukraine. While on the train, they run into a strange man who tries picking up Josh by rubbing his hand on his leg. Immediately, they kick the man out of their compartment and continue their journey.
   Upon reaching their destination they find it to be a complete dump. The city gets a little better as they enter it, but it’s not a very safe place to be and has its own gang of children terrorizing the streets.
   At least the hostel lives up to their expectations. It’s relatively clean and they end up sharing the

room with two beautiful women. While Josh and Paxton hook up with the young ladies, Oli ends up going out with the woman from the front desk.
After a night of dancing, drinking and sex the two friends awaken to find Oli never came back. When they go downstairs to see if there is any news, they are told that he has already checked out and left without them. The story seems a little odd, but it’s possible since they didn’t really know him that well.

At this point, the film is three quarters of the way through. The torturing lasts for a few minutes, until Paxton manages to escape and kill his tormenter. Again the film switches gears, this time from a torture flick to an action film.
Paxton grabs a gun and begins his escape from the prison. There are a few gory scenes as he watches body parts being hacked up and thrown into an incinerator and his rescue of a Japanese girl whose eye
he cuts off for some unknown reason, but for the most part it’s strictly action.

The film is mostly entertaining even though it can’t make up its mind at what genre it is. Even so, it is somewhat reminiscent of a Tarantino film as his movies tend to have awkward direction changes as well, but usually with better dialogue.
Overall the film is about average, with the large box office take coming from the fact that Tarantino’s name was attached to it and not because the film deserved it.

   A second day passes and again they go out partying with their female roommates. This time they both begin feeling sick. Josh is taken back to his room, but Paxton stumbles around and gets locked in a supply closet for the night.
   When Paxton returns to the hostel, he finds that his friend and the two girls have all checked out.
   Unfortunately, for Josh when he awakens he finds himself naked, tied to a chair and wearing a burlap sack over his head. As he tries to free himself the man from the train enters the room and begins to torture him first by drilling holes into his body, then cutting his Achilles tendons and eventually slitting his throat.
   Still looking for his friend, Paxton tracks down the two female roommates. They no longer look like a couple of supermodels, but instead look terrible and are hardly recognizable.
   After some convincing, one of them agrees to take him to his friend. She tells him that he went to an art show, but it’s pretty obvious there’s no art show when the building he is taken to is boarded up and looks more like a prison.
   But this doesn’t make him hesitate and he follows the girl down into the dark basement to where he meets his dead friend who is still being carve up and operated on. Before he has time to react, a couple of goons grab him and drag him into a room where he is shackled to a chair and awaits his torturer.