HOSTEL (FILM)

'''Hostel''' (2005) is Eli Roth's second feature film as a writer and director. The movie is rated 'R' for brutal scenes of torture and violence, strong sexual content, language, and drug use. Due to the graphic nature of this film, its showing has been restricted in certain countries, primarily those with strict censorship policies. The film was billed as "inspired by true events"; Eli Roth claimed to have read about poverty stricken individuals in Thailand who would sell "members of their family to organized crime, then American and European businessmen would pay $10,000 to walk in a room and shoot them in the head."^[1] The sequel to Hostel, '', was released on June 8, 2007.

Contents

Plot

Cast

Reaction

Sequel

Controversy and criticism

Notes

References

External links

Plot

''Hostel'' follows three backpackers in search of easy thrills in Europe, who are lured to an obscure hostel in Slovakia as victims of a secret thrill-kill industry.
The film opens in Amsterdam, where the backpackers are introduced. Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and Josh (Derek Richardson) are Americans and Óli (Eyþór Guðjónsson) is from Iceland. Looking for cheap thrills instead of art, they enjoy repeated experiences of drugs and prostitution.
After being kicked out of a club and locked out of their hostel, they meet Alexei (Lubomir Bukovy), a Russian man who tells them of a Slovak hostel that is filled with American-loving, sexually promiscuous women. During the train journey, they encounter a Dutch businessman (Jan Vlasák) whose bizarre eating habits and sexually forward behavior scares them half to death. On arrival at the hostel, they find they are sharing their room with Natalya (Barbara Nedeljáková) and Svetlana (Jana Kadeřábková). The room in which they are staying is Room 237 (a reference to ''The Shining'', one of ''Hostel's numerous allusions to other thrillers). The girls invite the new arrivals to a spa and later have sex with Paxton and Josh. During the night, the Dutchman from the train reappears, rescuing Josh from a confrontation with local street kids. He is very happy about this and offers to buy the Dutch Businessman a drink to which he reluctantly agrees. While they are sitting down Josh apologizes for his rude behavior on the train. The Dutch Businessman accepts his apology and says that he would have done the same thing at his age.
The next morning, the Americans discover that Óli is missing; as they leave the hostel in an effort to locate him, they are approached by a young Japanese woman named Kana (Jennifer Lim). Her friend Yuki has also disappeared. She shares with them a photo, sent to her phone, of the missing pair near the smokestack of an abandoned factory nearby, along with the word "Sayonara". Josh and Paxton refuse to believe that Óli would have left without informing them, and continue their search for him. Catching sight of a man wearing Óli's distinctive jacket, they follow him before catching up to him in a torture museum. When confronted, the stranger claims the jacket is his. While returning to the hostel, Paxton receives another picture message on his cell phone. The image is of Óli's head with the caption "I go home". Again, the Americans are not convinced, but decide to leave Bratislava with Kana the following day. That night, while partying with Natalya and Svetlana, both men apparently succumb to drugs. Josh returns to the hostel, but Paxton is accidentally locked in the disco's storage room, where he passes out. Later, Josh wakes up handcuffed in a chair in a dungeon-like room. The Dutch businessman enters, and Josh starts pleading for his life. The Dutch Businessman walks over to a table that is filled with different tools of torture. He looks around the table before picking up a cordless drill. He approaches Josh with it and while Josh is yelling he inserts the drill bit into Josh's leg. Josh asks him "why are you doing this?". He explains that he always wanted to be a surgeon but that the boards would not pass him and that business was too boring and he wanted to be involved with bigger things. When Josh begs for his life, the torturer slashes his Achilles tendons with a scapel, then removes his handcuffs and allows him to leave. Unable to walk, Josh attempts to crawl to the exit before the Dutchman kills him off-screen.
Paxton is released from the storage room the next morning and returns to the hostel to find that Kana is now also missing. Returning to his room, he finds a new pair of beautiful women inviting him to the spa in the same manner as earlier in the film. He wanders the streets looking for the smokestack in the background of the cellphone photo of Óli, but has the phone stolen. Paxton reports the disappearances to a local police officer (Miroslav Táborský), but is informed that nothing can be done. After this, he stumbles on Natalya and Svetlana at a non-tourist bar. Both of the women are acting strangely and are apparently either drunk or high on drugs. They repeatedly insist to Paxton that he have a drink with them. He presses them for information on the whereabouts of his friends and he is told that Josh and Óli have gone to an art show or exhibit. He demands to be taken there.
Natalya and an accomplice deliver Paxton to a factory on the outskirts of the town. In the courtyard, drivers wait by several cars, apparently for the visitors of the "art show" to leave.
Natalya lures him inside where he witnesses the Dutchman sewing up Josh's lifeless body. As Paxton confronts Natalya, he is grabbed by two thugs and dragged to a cell. Along the way, he sees others being tortured and brutalized in other cells by various unidentified "clients" of the group. He is handcuffed to a chair and left to await his fate in the dark. A German client (Petr Janiš) enters the room and begins toying with Paxton using scissors, however he appears nervous and hesitant. The American begs in English first, then switches to German. The torturer has him gagged and holds a gun to his head, but then sets the pistol aside. When Paxton begins to vomit, the German removes the gag and begins to harass him with a chainsaw. Paxton tries to bite his tormentor's fingers, but loses two of his own when the German cuts them off, also cutting off the handcuffs with a chainsaw. The torturer charges forward, slips on the gag, which is on the floor in the blood and vomit, and, in an allusion to ''The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'', severs his own leg. Paxton breaks free, retrieves the gun and kills the other man. He then pretends to be the German client and calls for the guard, then plays dead and shoots the guard in the head as he examines the German's corpse.
Dressed in a surgeon's apron and horned helmet he finds in his cell, Paxton disguises himself as a torturer and flees. He comes upon a cart, piled with dead bodies, and hides himself under them. A hunchbacked butcher (Josef Bradna) takes the cart into the basement where the bodies are incinerated. Paxton's severed fingers fall out of his pocket and the butcher groups them together with other human remains. Paxton spots Josh’s corpse staring at him , then waits for the butcher to take another tray of dead body parts to the incinerator. He then incapacitates the butcher with a hammer and continues his escape. On an upper level of the building, he finds a locker room and looks out the window to see police officers talking to the men outside, bringing him to realization that the police are part of the murder factory. He raids a locker and pulls on a suit and leather gloves to hide his mangled hand. In the pocket of the suit he finds a business card for Elite Hunting with a bloodhound marked on it, which shows this is a secret, worldwide, murder-for-profit organization. On the back of the card are handwritten prices for torture victims. Before he can leave, an American businessman (Rick Hoffman) arrives, and, believing Paxton to be another client, discusses his own victim and brings out a pistol he was given to "make it quick". When Paxton suggests he should do so, the other man disagrees, leaving the gun behind. Paxton takes it and escapes into the courtyard, finding an unlocked car with keys in the ignition. But before he can drive away, he hears a woman scream. Earlier in the film, Paxton admitted to Josh that he was haunted by the scream of a mother who had found her child drowned and how he was powerless to help. Unable to ignore this scream, he returns to the factory and finds the very American he talked to earlier torturing Kana with a blowtorch to the face. He kills the man and saves Kana, whose injuries have resulted in her right eye dangling from the socket.
Paxton and Kana steal a car and flee the factory, with two guards in pursuit. During the chase, the pair come upon Natalya, Svetlana and Alexei loitering in town. Paxton floors it and runs them down, apparently killing them instantly. However, Natalya is still alive but seriously injured. But as she attempts to get up she is run over and killed by the chasing guards. Later, their car is brought to a halt by the street gang of little kids; however, Paxton bribes them with a bag of bubble gum and the kids brutally attack the couple's pursuers instead. Paxton and Kana escape to the railway station, where several corrupt policemen and the same thugs from the factory are waiting for them. Kana catches her reflection and, instantly feeling that she has lost all personal dignity and honor, decides to kill herself as Paxton looks for a way onto the waiting train. Kana throws herself into the path of a moving locomotive, creating the diversion necessary for Paxton to get away and Paxton quickly boards the train.
On the train, Paxton hears the familiar voice of Josh's torturer, the Dutch businessman. When he arrives in Vienna, Austria, Paxton follows him to a public restroom, where he cuts off two of the man's fingers to avenge the two he lost, then slams his head in the toilet bowl and after a short time, resurfaces his head and shows him the reflection of his familiar attacker in his final moments, before cutting his throat as he begs for his life and quickly leaving on the next train.
There are several references to classic European horror films of the 1970s in ''Hostel''. The music played during the sex scene in the hostel is the Sneaker Pimps cover version of "How Do", the song (also known as "Willow's Song" and also covered by Doves) that is played during the nude dance in the 1973 British film ''The Wicker Man''.

Cast

Actor	Role
Jay Hernandez	Paxton
Derek Richardson	Josh
Eyþór Guðjónsson	Óli
Barbara Nedelj%C3%A1kov%C3%A1	Natalya
Jana Kadeřábková	Světlana
Jan Vlasák	The Dutch Businessman
Jennifer Lim	Kana
Lubomir Šilhavecký	Alex
Paula Wild	Monique
Petr Janiš	The German Surgeon
Jana Havlíčková	Vala
Vanessa Jungová	Saskia
Rick Hoffman	The American Client
Miroslav Táborský	Town Policeman
Dmitri Kalvezm	Butcher

Reaction

The film's opening weekend North American box office gross was $19.5 million, making it the First Number One Movie of 2006, and the top grossing film that weekend. It went on to gross a total of $47.2 million in the U.S. The film's budget was around $4.5 million.^[2], and the film went on to gross over $80 million dollars at the box office worldwide, and over $100 million on DVD worldwide, and started a wave of low budget copycat films, who tried to imitate the film's phenomenal worldwide success.
Critical results were either raves or pans, and the film received strong pre-release complaints from the country of Slovakia, which is depicted in the film. Slovak officials were disgusted by the film’s portrayal of their native country, claiming that it would “damage the good reputation of Slovakia” and would make foreigners feel that it was a dangerous place to be. Despite the fact that most of the movie is set in a small fictional location near Bratislava, Slovakia, actually not a single sequence was shot in Slovakia, and the film opened #1 at the box office in Slovakia. The filming locations were at the Barrandov Studios, in Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic. In addition to the lower costs of filming in the Czech Republic, Barrandov has well-equipped sound stages, making it a popular choice for US productions set in Europe. 95% of the film was shot on location in and around Prague, and the stage was only used for the main torture rooms. Director Eli Roth said that the film was not meant to be offensive, but rather to point out “Americans' ignorance of the world around them.”^[3]
Jean Francois Rauger, a major film critic for Le Monde, a French newspaper, and programmer of the Cinémathèque Française, listed "Hostel" as the Best American Film of 2006, and hailed the film as a brilliant comment on capitalism gone too far. Artforum magazine in America called the film the smartest comment in cinema to date on American imperialism. While many critics simply attack the film, and Roth, for its violence, many others defend the film for its subversive commentary on the darkest aspects of a capitalist society, and how people exploit others for their own pleasure.

Sequel

'' is the sequel to Hostel. The film was released on June 8, 2007.

Controversy and criticism

The movie has been subject to harsh criticism in both Slovakia and in the Czech Republic. It portrays Slovakia as an undeveloped, poor and uncultured country suffering from high criminality, war, and prostitution. To many people, ''Hostel'' appears to be misplaced, both culturally and geographically. Roth claims he used Slovakia to point out the ignorance of Americans, and that the film is not meant to be an actual description. The tourist board of Slovakia invited Roth on an all-expense paid trip to their country so he could see it's not made up of run down factories and kids who kill for bubble gum.
Tomas Galbavy, a Slovak Member of Parliament, recently commented: "''I am offended by this film. I think that all Slovaks should feel offended.''" In the same article, Roth defended his work by saying "''Americans do not even know that this country exists. My film is not a geographical work but aims to show Americans' ignorance of the world around them.''"^[4]

In his defense, Roth said he did this intentionally to portray Slovakia with old stereotypes representing the backpackers' general ignorance of their surroundings.^[5] Roth said the film was meant to show American stereotypes of Eastern Europe, while the Americans in the film are portrayed accurately.
Roth has repeatedly pointed out in numerous interviews that despite many films in ''The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'' series, people still go to Texas.^[6][7]

Notes

★ When Paxton is about to be tortured by the German surgeon, he begs to the surgeon in German. Director Eli Roth decided not to add subtitles, preferring to leave what was said a mystery. The lines translate as "If you kill me, it'll destroy your life. Every time you close your eyes, you'll see me. I'll be in your nightmares every night, your whole life. I will ruin it."

★ The asian man Paxton speaks to before entering the torture building is Takashi Miike, famed director of Ichi the Killer.

★ The portions of the film which were set in Slovakia were actually filmed in Cesky Krumlov, in the Czech Republic.

★ The place of torture, referred to as the "exhibition", was in reality a former psychiatric hospital in the Czech Republic, which, according to Roth, housed political dissidents during the communist era.

★ When the backpackers first arrive at the Hostel, the television is showing a scene from Pulp Fiction. Eli Roth has said that this was put into the film for two reasons: one, to show his gratitude to Tarantino for his support, and two, to show Tarantino's universal appeal. This scene was based on an incident Roth's brother Gabriel had traveling to a hostel in Bulgaria, where "Pulp Fiction" was playing on the T.V. in the lobby when he walked in.

★ The song playing the first time Paxton, Josh, and Óli go to the club is called "Pravda Víťazí" by Slovakian rock group Tublatanka. Roth used Czechoslovakian pop and rock music from the early 80's to give the film a more authentic feel and to introduce American audiences to the music, which Roth listened to all during the shooting.

★ Director Eli Roth has a short cameo as a stoner laughing at his friend.

References

1. http://www.timeout.com/film/news/1007.html
2. http://imdb.com/title/tt0450278/business
3. http://imdb.com/news/wenn/2006-02-28#celeb4
4. http://us.imdb.com/news/wenn/2006-02-28#celeb4
5. http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/hostel/blog/archives/2006/04/
6. http://www.close-upfilm.com/features/Featuresarchive/eliroth.htm
7. http://www.reallyscary.com/interview.asp

External links

★ Official site

★

★ Hostel Fanlisting

★ Time Out Set visit and Eli Roth interview

★ Search hostels in Slovakia

★ Official site of Bratislava, capital of Slovakia

★ Metacritic: Hostel

★ In-Depth Analysis of 'Hostel' and 'Hostel 2'

★ Cast: Hostel

★ "Hostel" review by Peter Bradshaw at Guardian Unlimited

★ Coverage of Bratislava and Slovakia reactions