And Now For Something Completely Brutal
Hostel (2005)
Hostel: Part II (2007)
When I think of horror movie, I think of things men make up to scare us. What's even scarier though is a situation that could very well be real. These two movies are basically about a place in Slovakia (aka The Slovak Republic) a landlocked section of Europe where rich men can 'buy' a torture victim. Huh? Let me explain.
Hostel: Three college students are backpacking through Europe. Back when they made An American Werewolf In London, that meant actually hoofing it around Europe. I guess today, it means travelling by train wherever they want to go. Which means they've got bucks. And I hate them already. The three are casual acquaintances, meeting during their travels and kind of hanging out together. Paxton (Jay Hernandez), Josh and Oli, after a night of partying, meet a Dutch man named Alexei who tells them for drugs, large amounts of alcohol and loose women, there's an unknown hostel (for those who don't know, that's just a cheap form of lodging usually for young people) that's also a kind of spa, really nice and promising lots of sex.
On their way they meet a strange guy who insists on eating with his hands (oh those European types) and alienates them when he puts his hand on one of their knees. In the small Slovak town they check into said hostel and immediately find themselves sharing a room with beautiful women. And yes, there is plenty of everything - drugs, alcohol and sex. How do they get these kids to leave?
Aha, there's the rub. Students start disappearing from the hostel, being told by the employees that they have checked out. But they didn't tell anybody. This continues, and the weirdness of the people continue, including children with no fear of death, willing to slit your throat for something as simple as bubble gum. Something is seriously off here. After Oli disappears, Paxton wants to leave but Josh asks for just one more night of sex, drugs and... okay, just sex. While dancing at a club, Paxton gets sick and passes out in the storage room. When he wakes and goes back to the hostel, gee whiz, his friend Josh has checked out also.
Josh has not, of course, checked out, but wakes to find himself handcuffed to a chair. And the gut churning can now begin. You think a chainsaw wielding maniac is scary? Try a normal looking businessman who always wanted to be a doctor but has trembling hands so he was rejected from medical school. As he's sharpening instruments. And you realize that Josh is going to be his first 'patient'. He initially lets Josh out of the chair but then cuts his Achilles tendons, preventing him from escaping. He is slowly, horribly, brutally killed. And I do mean brutal.
Meanwhile Paxton is getting insistent and finally one of the women tells him that his friend went to an 'art exibit'. He demands to be taken there. Stupid boy. She does. It is a large, run down warehouse out in the middle of nowhere. She takes him to the entrance, but doesn't go in, saying she has 'already seen it'. The man at the entrance says there is no entrance fee for him to pay. In he goes, getting stupider and stupider by the minute. He shows up just in time to see Josh's corpse being sliced and diced by the wanna-be doctor. He is then captured, put in another room, and told he has been 'sold'.
A German client, Johann, enters and is ready for his 'prize'. First he gags Paxton to stop his screaming, then he removes it as Paxton pukes all over himself. He starts tormenting him, but accidentally cuts off two of Paxton's fingers (he had wanted it to last much longer). Very brutal. But with the loss of the fingers also came a loss of the restraint holding that hand down. Paxton is able to get loose. Then by movie coincidence, or just to move things along, a stupid Johann falls, slicing open his own leg with a chainsaw (ah, we do have a chainsaw wielding maniac here - so the brutal just got taken down a peg or two). Of the weapons and tools on the table, there is a gun. Paxton grabs it and shoots Johann.
Paxton shoots the guard that comes in by pretending he's still in the chair. He escapes the cell and hides in the bottom of a cart piled with corpses. The man with the cart goes to the bottom floor of the building to throw the bodies in the incinerator. In this floor he finds the stitched up corpse of Josh. He kills the cart pusher and goes up and makes it to a dressing room. He meets another American who has also come here to join an organization called the Elite Hunting game. He asks Paxton questions on the experience believing that Paxton also paid.
He discovers another student from the hostel being tortured by the American he met and frees her, killing the American. The two flee in a car, accidentally meeting the three persons who set them all up in the street. Paxton steps on the accelerator pedal to run them over.
With the help of the child gang, Paxton and the girl elude the guards and head to the train station. When she sees a reflection of her disfigured face, she jumps in front of an oncoming train, while Paxton gets on another train.
Aboard the train, Paxton hears the voice of the businessman who eats with his hands, yet another one of the torturers in the factory. In Vienna, he follows him to a public restroom and throws the Elite Hunting's card under his stall. When the businessman reaches to pick it up, Paxton cuts off two of his fingers, holds his head underwater and, when the businessman sees Paxton's reflection, slices his throat. Paxton then boards a train leaving Vienna. Ultimate of brutal, no? No.
Hostel: Part II: Paxton (reprised by Jay Hernandez) is at his girlfriend's house, where he constantly suffers from night terrors. He keeps remembering the businessman in the bathroom, being in a hospital where the police are questioning him, and they always end up that the police also carry an Elite Hunting card. She thinks he's paranoid and states she only took him back because she felt sorry for him. Nice girl. He finds out she has told her sister where they were, when he had made her promise no one could know. He gets out of bed and tells her that she won't have to worry anymore about him. He's right.
When she wakes in the morning, she goes down to the breakfast table to see him sitting there, decapitated, the cat lapping up the... okay you get the picture. Never survive a horror movie, you just get killed in the following ones... usually.
We have three new victims... umm I mean students: Beth (Lauren German), Whitney and Lorna. Again, we get the impression they are only casually acquainted. Right now they are taking art classes in Italy (Where are these damn kids getting all this money?). A model, Axelle, tells them of a luxurious spa in Slovakia and that they can stay in a hostel there. Dum dum dum. Or should I say dumb dumb dumb?
These students lie to their parents about what they're doing and where they go, so there's no way in the world any of them can be traced. Which makes me want them dead already, but that's not new. They travel by train (of course) and meet some unsavory characters (not every European man is a gentleman you know) and get into a little trouble but come out of it basically intact and settle for a bit in Slovakia.
Meanwhile we get some backstory that the first movie didn't really provide and explains this Elite Hunting club a little better. Businessmen and just plain richer-than-God people around the world are using their smart phones, iPads, whatever in a bidding war. It is shown that as soon as a student checks into the Hostel, they must hand over their passports (I assume for a deposit or something). The employee then takes pictures of each passport and the bidding wars begin. It's like watching eBay for extreme perverts. A picture and brief description of each hostel guest is shown, and the bidding goes into the thousands.
Many, many thousands for some. The movie focuses on an aggressive sort of man who is desperately trying to 'win' one of these bids - this is Todd (Richard Burgi). His wimp of a friend (I think they like to keep those type around for general bullying) doesn't quite have the cash but has the motive - he absolutely hates his wife who dominates him. With Todd's help Stuart (Roger Bart) gets to have a victim of his very own, and the two arrange to go to Slovakia, staying in the most expensive hotel they have.
Later that night, at the village's 'Harvest Festival', Lorna discovers that Beth has inherited a vast fortune from her mother. Stuart approaches Beth and the two share a friendly, albeit awkward, conversation. An intoxicated Lorna is taken for a boat ride, resulting in her kidnapping. Beth and Whitney leave the party, while Axelle (who 'decided' to travel with the girls) volunteers to stay behind and wait for Lorna. The next morning, the now naked and gagged Lorna is hung upside down with her ankles and wrists tightly shackled. A woman named Mrs. Bathory (Get the reference? No? Look it up. Sheesh, didn't anybody pay attention in English Lit. classes?) enters the room, undresses, and lies beneath Lorna.
She then uses a long blade to repeatedly slash Lorna, and revels in bathing in Lorna's blood, before fatally slashing her victim's throat. The other two still alive girls enjoy the spa, and Beth falls asleep. When she wakes up, she's alone but notices she is being stalked. She tries to get away but the murderous group of street kids attack her. Axelle and a man obviously in charge of the operation named Sasha rescues her. Sasha, when the two women are gone, murders one of the children as punishment. These are truly fearless kids - he sticks the gun in each of their faces - not a one of them flinches. They are all ready and unafraid of death. As long as they get their bubblegum.
Aaaaaand we're back at the factory. Whitney is strapped to a chair, awaiting the 'winner' of her bid war. Beth is taken to a mansion, where she finds a room filled with heads, with Paxton's head at the center of the room. She is then taken to a room in the factory and is strapped to a chair. Stuart enters and explains about Elite Hunting. He unties her from the chair and almost wimps out, but she is physically similar to his wife, so instead he then knocks her out.
Whitney is taken to Todd's cell and strapped to a chair, where he gleefully terrorizes her with a circular saw but loses his nerve after getting careless (these are not professionals remember) and accidentally cutting through part of her skull. Horrified by what he has done, Todd tries to leave without killing her but is told it is not part of his contract. When Todd angrily refuses, the guards turn savage dogs loose and they maul him to death. The Elite Hunting representatives try to find someone to finish with Whitney, taking a picture of her bandaged up and at a 'reduced price', going from room to room seeing who wants her, inquiring whether an Italian cannibal who is eating a student alive and a man who has his victim chained to an electrified metal bed are interested.
Stuart, now torturing Beth and blaming her for Todd's death, takes the offer on Whitney and decapitates her with a machete, he gleefully tells Beth. She tries to seduce him into releasing her from the chair, then fights him off and chains Stuart to the chair, driving a needle into his ear canal and screaming for the gun-drawing guards to 'get Sasha!'. Beth makes the Elite Hunting boss an offer: she will pay the full fee to become a customer.
When she is told that she must kill somebody to leave, Stuart stupidly insults Beth with the 'C' word that she particularly hates. A lot. A WHOLE lot. She cuts off Stuart's genitals and throws them to the dogs, telling them 'let him bleed to death'. Per the standard contract, Beth is given an Elite Hunting tattoo. Hey, at least she's alive, right? But is she still a victim, or has she now become part of the 'club', willing to participate in bids? We don't know, but we wonder.
In the closing sequence, Axelle is lured from the village festival into the woods by the street children, where Beth surprises her and cuts her head off, allowing the gang to play soccer with it. Yikes.
There is a Hostel 3, released last year I understand, but they set it in Las Vegas. To me, that totally ruins the atmosphere of the whole thing. The whole point of it being in Slovakia is it's another country and the parents have no way of really knowing exactly where their kids are.
And the different police agencies are I'm sure not so hot on keeping track of students travelling through their country. So how can they get away with the same type of kidnapping, torture and murder right in Nevada? Probably why it went straight to DVD. Hostel Part II pretty well summed up and explained whatever questions you had from the first one, there really was no further exploitation of this story necessary.
Note: I did check out this movie much MUCH later and it was a little different than I expected. It involved a group of 'friends' who are in Las Vegas for a bachelor party blow-out. But one has a secret and soon the guys find themselves in a strange building where groups of people in a room 'bet' on outcomes of torture taking place in rooms faced with glass.
So these aren't college students but I still stand by the fact that all these people can't just disappear in Nevada and not be noticed by someone. Some of the victims were foreign visitors - but I would think the US would still be a little more on the ball. I hope anyway.
Oh. The movie. My point being, that this is NOT horror although Netflix put it in that category. That's probably because the 'disaster film genre' has pretty much disappeared. It was strong in the 70's - you had TPA, The Towering Inferno, Airport and Airport 1975 (we miss you Karen Black) and so on. In the 80's - not so much. They tried to revive the genre with several successful and a lot of failing movies, but we don't get the Paul Newmans, Steve McQueens and the Charlton Hestons type of movies we associate with the disaster movie. Did you know Independence Day was one? That's because it was marketed as a blockbuster action film. Same with Titanic, 2012 and other big big budget films. Buuuut, enough with my ramblings, on with the movie.
It starts the way disaster movies do - you get a brief introduction to the people who will be suffering for you for approximately 90 minutes and you get to decide who you like and who you despise. That's the usual formula. Then the bad thing happens and you watch them all suffer, pretty sure who'll live and who'll die. In the 70's it didn't matter how big of a star you were, that didn't ensure your survival. In this movie we know... absolutely no one so it doesn't matter (Huh? Selena Gomez is in this? Never heard of her.).
But you decide pretty quickly in this movie who you like, and who you want to see squished as soon as possible. The basic premise of what they are calling a disaster-horror movie (pfft): A group of people are vacationing in Chile (I hate them already) and while they are enjoying the decadence and the parties and the drugs and the... whatever, BOOM, earthquake. And if that wasn't enough disaster for you - the threat of a tsunami. Now we get to see - who the REAL good guys and bad guys are.
Eli Roth doesn't pull any punches with this one (and he also puts himself in the starring role) - the effects are huge (and probably mostly CGI'd as everything is these days) and I'd say as good if not better than the ones in 2012. And you find out pretty quickly which monsters are actually human and vice versa. A bonus added to the mix - a prison (In the middle of the city?) has collapsed and all those nasty bastards are out roaming with the decent folk - you know, the ones firebombing police, looting, killing people. The nice ones.
As the trend is going in the horror genre (of which this is really not - sorta) the last person of the group to be alive is a woman. Which one I couldn't tell you 'cause I didn't care enough about the characters to know anything except their basic attitudes - but this girl has short hair and a kick-ass attitude. Don't know if that ensured her survival or what. And of course when she needs a diversion, perfect time for an aftershock. Duh.
So after a final 'dead babies everywhere' gross-out (you'll have to watch the movie to find out why) she finds herself on the beach. The nice, placid beach. After passing out for a while, she starts that crazy laughing that says she's not going to be sane anymore but that's okay - we see behind her what the city has been warned about since the beginning of this movie - a massive tsunami. And she STARTS TO RUN. Really?
