I think a lot of people could have done better ith the subject. The premise (which is what undoubtedly sold the film to begin with) was awesome. Big guys pay money to torture and kill people however they want to. Unwitting travellors are lured into the game. Incredible ad disturbing concept. Like I said, this is why it was made. It's original. It's got appeal. It could have been great. Unfortunately, the script stank.

So I was blessed to finally view Eli Roth's signature piece nearly two years after I first heard about it.  I think I can sum it all up in three words:

What the fuck?  

What the flying fuck was this about?  This has to be one of the stupidest, most cliche-driven, poorly written/executed films I've ever seen.  I kept waiting for something cool to happen, but it never did.  

Okay, so we got these three guys, two Americans and one Icelander and they're total jackasses.  Of course one American is a horndog who could care less about anyone/thing but himself and the other guy is a little more sensitive and shy and isn't as quick to have sex with anything that has a vagina.  Oh, and they want to get stoned(lolz). Of course they both say fuck, fag, and shit with every other word which made all of their dialogue sound like absolute crap.    I know some people curse a lot, but man, in a movie, don't litter the dialogue with it.  It sounds so phonie-baloney after a few seconds.  "Man, fuck, so I fuckin' went downtown and, fuckin', bought some milk, fuck, and shit man, fuckin' went home."  Yeah, you sound like a winner.

So then there's some nudity for a while, and if it wasn't for those naked European chicks, I would have fallen asleep in the first 40 minutes.  Nothing was going on except a couple morons expressing how stupid they are.

And then the kind of sensitive American gets kidnapped or something and the hyped up torture/blood begins with classic idiocy.  So the guy doing the torturing...he takes a power drill...and drills holes in the guy...and you only see one.  I don't know which part of that I loathed more, the fact that it was a drill or you only saw one hole.  I thought this movie was supposed to make me squirm.  And a drill???? Are you kidding me??  You're in this basement place with all these spikes and sharp things all over the place and you pick a goddamn'd drill?  Okay.

Now, I watched this movie over the span of two days and this is where it stopped.  So day 2, the horndog American discovers that something fishy is going on so big bad Paxton(that's his name) needs to investigate.  Blah blah blah, eventually he's led to the torture area where we see that there's a buttload of other people there getting the crap beaten out of them as well.

So his turn to be beaten up comes.  The evil child molester-esque doctor dude comes in and he's waving these long scissors around and points a gun to Paxton's head and there's some nice tension there, but instead what does he do?  Why, he grabs a CHAINSAW and cuts off two of his fingers.  THAT'S IT?  After all that build up you take a chainsaw and cut off his fingers.  Okay.  Real original.  Luke Skywalker getting his hand cut off disturbed me more than that.

So then, of course, the evil child molester-esque doctor dude trips and drops the chainsaw and accidentally cuts himself up and this gives Paxton enough time to grab the gun and shoot that guy dead.  Then he runs around like an idiot for a bit and goes outside where there's a bunch of cars.  Evidently everyone in Europe leaves their keys in the ignition. hur hur hur.

But wait...suddenly he hears a girl scream!  Oh my god!  He's gotta go back!  He's gotta grow as a character and win our respect even though he's still an idiot!  So he runs back into the torture place(keep in mind there's people getting tortured all around, but no, just that one scream that he hears he has to go after).

This is the only scene that got a reaction out of me.  The crazy doctor dude is putting a blow torch to this girl's face when Paxton comes to her rescue and guns down the doctor.  So then the girl is crying, her face is a mess and her right eye pops out and Paxton doesn't know what to do so he cuts it off and all this yellow eye juice pops out.  Pretty gross.  I grew a little uncomfortable during that scene, so Eli got something right.

So the girl is screaming her ass off and then two seconds later she's running outside with her hero(she's not screaming anymore, of course, and she's perfectly up to speed.  You'd think after having a blow-torch burn at your head for a while you'd be at least a little light headed).  They get into the car(because, remember, everyone in Europe leaves their keys in the ignition) and drive away.

Then they drive through an alley and Paxton sees the hot naked European chicks who set him up in the beginning.  Likewise, he runs them down.  Now, at the same time there's a couple biffs from the torture place who are chasing them in a car as well.  One of the hot naked European chicks survived the first hit, but, damn it, got run over by the biffs and dragged for a while.  They didn't even stop.

What happens to the biffs, though?  Well, they continue for a bit when all of a sudden a bunch of rat street kids block their way(remember how they ran over the chick and dragged her?[shit, they're even on the same team]), well they stopped for the kids, of course, because they need to die and that's what happens.  Nice convenient way of killing them off.

Eventually girl-who-got-her-eye-cut-out sees what she looks like in a window and commits suicide.  Yeah.  Okay, now here's the part that I don't get.  I may have missed something during the day break.  At the end, Paxton finds the first doctor who killed his friend.  My question is, though, how did Paxton know this was the guy?  Because the doctor ran off the train, then Paxton's friend bought him a drink...but Paxton never saw him after the train, did he?  How could he have known that this guy was behind it all?

Well, whatever, instead if escaping, Paxton decides to kill the guy on the crapper.  Then he gets on the train and leaves.  The end.  

I remember laughing my ass off at the marketing campaign for this when it came out.  "Hostel is so disturbing that paramedics had to be called in at preview screenings!"  OH YEAH!  WOOHOO!  Yeah, real quick, the only disturbing thing about this movie was how bad it sucked.  It was just crap.  Aside from the eye sequence, there's just split seconds of torture and blood and body parts.  "Devil's Rejects" was a far more disturbing film and far more enjoyable.  Check that out.  Skip this piece of crap.

Blah!

Quoted from greg And then the kind of sensitive American gets kidnapped or something and the hyped up torture/blood begins with classic idiocy.  So the guy doing the torturing...he takes a power drill...and drills holes in the guy...and you only see one.  I don't know which part of that I loathed more, the fact that it was a drill or you only saw one hole.  I thought this movie was supposed to make me squirm.  And a drill???? Are you kidding me??  You're in this basement place with all these spikes and sharp things all over the place and you pick a goddamn'd drill?  Okay.

Indeed. Giant pliers, a mallet, and hot oil are preferable, aren't they? (Sorry, I had to).

Seriously though, if you thought Hostel was stupid, imagine what would happen if Roth co-wrote it with the Marquis de Sades and had it rewritten by Michael Bay. That's basically what Hostel II felt like.

Hostel was made for $4 million. It's funny what they can do, with such low budget. However, hostel 2 was so bad

Hostel was awesome!  Truly awesome, and for $4 million, it is amazing, but Eli was so smart with everything about that movie - filming in Prague, using local "talent", and really everything.

I thought Hostel 2 was also great!  Not quite as good, but we lost that shock factor, and it was a differnet story, revolving around teh antags as much as the protags, which was a cool angle.

I'm actually kinda surprised that people had a luke warm reception to it, but it also was a big money maker for sure.

in my opinion, Hostel 1 was way better. What did you guys like about Hostel 2?

I actually liked everything for the most part.  I thought the violence was well done and shocking, and although "over the top" in ways, still realistic.  I thought the stroy was also good, and I liked the characters.  I also liked how the "twist" was played out with Stuart turning out to be the "bad guy" while his buddy, who was all gung ho about killing, turned out to be unable to go through with it.

I guess what I liked he msot about it was that it didn't follow the original note for note, and dared to be different and able to stand on its own.

Only thing I didn't really like was the train ride sequence.  I think it went on too long and didn't really go anywhere.  The very end was a bit out there and bizarre, but by that point, it had already won me over.

To toss out my opinion of the Hostels, I hated the first one. Absolutely hated it. You had thin characters who did stupid things and got themselves killed. One barely survived and saved a chick who killed herself. I rolled my eyes multiple times over the course of that one.

Hostel 2, on the other hand, took the established premise, expanded upon it, and then gave us some decent characters. That would be  characters on both sides of the fence and we got to see the whole deal in action. I actually enjoyed that one well overand above the first.

Quoted from George Willson To toss out my opinion of the Hostels, I hated the first one. Absolutely hated it. You had thin characters who did stupid things and got themselves killed. One barely survived and saved a chick who killed herself. I rolled my eyes multiple times over the course of that one. Hostel 2, on the other hand, took the established premise, expanded upon it, and then gave us some decent characters. That would characters on both sides of the fence and we got to see the whole deal in action. I actually enjoyed that one well overand above the first.

I avoided 2 due to my emotional numbness watching the first one, I may give it a go due to the comments today.

"To toss out my opinion of the Hostels, I hated the first one. Absolutely hated it. You had thin characters who did stupid things and got themselves killed. One barely survived and saved a chick who killed herself. I rolled my eyes multiple times over the course of that one.

Hostel 2, on the other hand, took the established premise, expanded upon it, and then gave us some decent characters. That would characters on both sides of the fence and we got to see the whole deal in action. I actually enjoyed that one well overand above the first."

Got to say, Hostel was one of the worst films I've ever seen in my life. Complete tripe from start to finish. I think it should be illegal to make films that bad. : )

I'm surprised to hear some people say Hostel 2 was better. At some point I MAY attempt to watch it.

To say that Hostel was one of the worst films you've ever seen in your life, makes it very clear that you do not like the genre here, cause otherwise, that comment make no sense.  Hostel started a revolution in film making...began it's own sub-genre (totrture porn), and was for the most part, very critically acclaimed.

It's obvisouly not for everyone, but it certainly was well done and brought things to the screen that we've never seen before.

Thought I'd resurrect this thread since the topic was active on the Script Club board. There was a lot of talk about Hostel, so here's what a lot of people around here thought of it. To throw out a quick comment to Dreamscale's comment about it being a critically new genre of "torture porn" and it just isn't for everyone.

I concentrate on the storyline, characters, and that sort of thing. Do I have issues with the torture sequences? Not at all. They were cringe-worthy and graphic. Those were done well. Very shocking, in fact.

The issue I had was not the genre, but the writing. The characters were fairly unlikeable and thinly developed. You only felt sorry for them because of the graphic-ness of the torture. The plot was incredibly thin at best and only served (much like porn) to take us into the focal point of the film.

And shall we discuss sheer coincidences? Our lead was given the girl that took them in on a silver platter to wipe out. He had no claim or investment on the girl he saved, and yet he risked his life on that total stranger in an environment where he had little to no chance of surviving himself. And then she killed herself, completely invalidating that action. Then he just HAPPENED to meet the doctor on the train. Seriously?

I give genre very little thought and watch a movie for a movie. I judge genres pretty evenly, keeping in mind (at least a little bit) what they're going for, but for the most part, storytelling is an ancient art that is finite is how it works. This isn't rules. It's a matter of telling a good story however you want to do so. You can have a boring story, but still have a complete one.

This movie, however, eschews plot and character (the most basic storytelling elements) to show us some T&A and watch people get cut up. Hostel 2 worked better. If I hated the genre, then I would dislike the second film, but I don't. That should be proof enough that I'm not dissing the genre. I just think the first film did a poor job of telling a story.

Quoted Text To say that Hostel was one of the worst films you've ever seen in your life, makes it very clear that you do not like the genre here, cause otherwise, that comment make no sense.  Hostel started a revolution in film making...began it's own sub-genre (totrture porn), and was for the most part, very critically acclaimed. It's obvisouly not for everyone, but it certainly was well done and brought things to the screen that we've never seen before.

I like horror films, as long as they are imaginative or well made. Hostel was a terrible film, adolescent and puerile with weak characters and a ridiculous plot with holes that could only be filled by sheer coincidence.

As I say, it was one of the very worst films I've ever had the misfortune of sitting through. It was one of those films that the main characters were so weak that you wanted them all to be killed as quickly as possible so you could go home.

I think our definition of "Revolution" must be substantially different.

For me there was nothing in this film that I'd not seen before. The premise was fairly interesting, but the filmmakers lacked the intelligence to follow through with any interesting concepts that could have come from it.

Anyway, as ever, it's all about opinions. For me this film is pretty much the Nadir of Western filmmaking, a film completley devoid of intelligence, morality and quality.

I liked Hostel. It made me feel uneasy and sick to my stomach. I thought the characters were well developed and the acting was also good. My favorite part was when they killed the "likable" guy first and left us with the obnoxious guy. It was a nice curve ball and I think it paid off very well.

~Zack~

I lost touch with this post...sorry.

Hey Decadence, I'm still shocked that you repeat that this is one of the worst films you've ever seen.  Again, I have to say that you must not have seen many horror movies, because it doesn't make any sense that you say this is worse than the majority of crappy horror movies we're subjected to.

You name the horror movie, and chances are I tell you this is better...probably much better.  There aren't many that worked like this did on first view.  It's actualy a movie that I enjoy watching over and over, because it's just downright well done.

Yeah, Zack, the acting was very good, for the most part.  Sure there are many times when you say out loud, oh c'mon, don't do that, or why would he do that, but it's a frickin movie...a frickin horror movie, and for the most part, that means that even the best of the bunch bend reality and believabailtiy.