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Some rogerebert.com regulars have been wondering why Ebert didn't review Eli Roth's heavily promoted horror film "Hostel" when it opened last Friday. The answer is simple: Roger was on (a well-deserved) vacation when the movie was screened. So, I thought I'd whip up a little "Critical Debate" feature (which we sometimes associate with reviews in our database) to show you what other critics had to say about "Hostel":
The torture question may be a source of hand-wringing in the halls of power, but in Hollywood, it’s business as usual, and "Cabin Fever" writer/director Eli Roth’s newest (“presented” by ear-slicing auteur Quentin Tarantino) literally makes it a case of New Europe capitalism.... The setup is pungently manipulative: How unappealing can a gang of horror protagonists be — two American pussy hounds (Jay Hernandez and Derek Richardson) and their Icelandic drifter pal (Eythor Gudjonsson) on a backpacking tour of red light districts — and still be sympathetic enough for the hell ride to follow, when an Eastern European detour leads them to an easy-sex hostel that serves as a victim trap for an anything-for-a-price slaughter society?
-- Robert Abele, L.A. Weekly
Having tasted the charms of the former Soviet empire, our dude heroes get sold off, one by one, to the local warehouse dungeon, where for a mere $25,000 clients can arrange to torture and kill someone in any way they fancy. What's disturbing about this scenario is its patina of plausibility: You may or may not believe that slavering redneck psychos, of the kind who leer through Rob Zombie's "The Devil's Rejects," can be found in the Southwest, but it's all too easy to envision this sort of depravity in the former Soviet bloc, the crack-up of which has produced a brutal marketplace of capitalistic fiendishness. The torture scenes in "Hostel" (snipped toes, sliced ankles, pulled eyeballs) are not, in essence, much different from the surgical terrors in the "Saw" films, only Roth, by presenting his characters as victims of the same world of flesh-for-fantasy they were grooving on in the first place, digs deep into the nightmare of a society ruled by the profit of illicit desire.
-- Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
Controversial for its unnecessary, unjustified exploitation of gore, Roth’s film implicates the audience in its perversity. Never mind that you may like graphically violent films in general or that you thought Roth’s picture was going to be more frightening in the conventional sense than disgusting. You have paid to watch a film about people paying to torture other people. The images that make you go “ewww” are more or less equally split between being on and off screen, as if to strengthen the association between audience-voyeurism and the cruelty inflicted upon the victims of very rich, sick men.
-- Stina Chyn, Film Threat
It’s not as gruesome as "The Devil’s Rejects" nor is it as depressing as "Wolf Creek," but Roth wrote and directed these scenes with a style all his own and he works it to the breaking point. The torture scenes aren’t tame by any means, but you think you’re seeing more than you really are. Also, they’re very cinematic — that’s the kind I, personally, prefer. I don’t need full-on, snuff-film realism. [...]
Unfortunately, there’s the stink of desperation surrounding the "Hostel" ad campaign. “Presented by Quentin Tarantino”; what does that mean, exactly? Inspired by true events; Yeah, right. TV ads with a smoky-voiced announcer warning that audience members have fainted at test screenings. The fact it’s being dumped in January’s wasteland of bad movies doesn’t help, either. For once, all of this means nothing. Yes, there are a couple of over-the-top, whacky scenes (I’m talking to you, Rick Hoffman) but ultimately, they fit.
If you’re looking for a scary movie to see this weekend, you’ve got "BloodRayne" (fantasy), "Munich" (real-life), or "Hostel." My advice? This one is your passport to terror — think of it as going to Misery-Land. Slide in, belt up, and hang on: "Hostel" is the horror movie equivalent of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride!
-- Staci Layne Wilson, Horror.com
Falling somewhere between fratboy porno wish fulfillment and Europhobic sex-tourism scare flick, Eli Roth's taut, wily, but ultimately pointless shocker "Hostel" is neither as transgressive nor as grueling as it aims to be. [...]
"Hostel" is more sophisticated than Roth's jokey, derivative "Cabin Fever" (2002), and plays keenly on Yank xenophobia via queasy allusions to Hammer's '60s pop-gothic potboilers, their harsher Italian and German kin, and such real-life horrors as the Holocaust and, briefly, post-A-bomb Hiroshima.... But the film is too casually misanthropic and enamored of its expulsive prosthetic virtuosity to be politically relevant, and it's not clear what response—shame? outrage? titillation?—Roth is after.
-- Mark Holcomb, Village Voice
A gore-hound fable grounded in homegrown puritanism and anti-American sentiment abroad, ”Hostel” shouts, ”Yankee, go home and keep it zipped.” It’s a cautionary tale about the perils of both American foreign policy and sampling foreign boot-tay. [...]
Reviewers are calling ”Hostel” scary, but I don’t remember when ”scary” became synonymous with gruesome, repugnant and vaguely homophobic. The film is a throwback to the 1970s -- keep an eye out for the ”eye-gasm” scene -- and the film grows increasingly phony.
-- James Verniere, Boston Herald
Inspired by the brutal exploitation pictures of the 1970's and the nasty new breed of Asian horror films, "Hostel" is motivated by an adolescent urge to shock. And while it's true that no civilized person will remain unscathed by the film's relentless bigotry -- this is one of the most misogynistic films ever made -- Mr. Roth's gory spectacles are too calculated to deliver the transgressive jolts they so obviously seek.
A cameo appearance by Takashi Miike, the intermittently brilliant director of genre freakouts like "Ichi the Killer" and "Izo," drives home the essential timidity of Mr. Roth's vision. For all his vivid outrages and considerable filmmaking chops, he isn't pushing boundaries or unearthing fresh hells of the imagination. At the end of the day, if you've seen one psychopath go to work in a basement abattoir, you've seen them all.
-- Nathan Lee, New York Times
