"Inspired by a conversation with Harry Knowles ( yikes) about looking for "the sickest thing [one] could find on the internet," and an alleged "murder vacation" website located on the dark web, Roth decided to create a no-holds-barred gore-fest that leveled up the gruesomeness he pulled off in his flesh-rotting debut, Cabin Fever. The result was Hostel, and it certainly lived up to his blood-stained agenda."
"The film follows two American students on their backpacking trip across Europe. An obviously sleazy man encourages them to visit a hostel near Bratislava, Slovakia, with the promise of limitless hot chicks and no-strings-attached sex. It turns out that they've walked into a sinister underworld where bored rich people pay to torture and mutilate others. Cue the slicing, dicing, chainsaws, and blowtorches."
"Hostel is not for the weak-stomached. It's detailed to the point of agony, surgical in its vivisections of these screaming prisoners whose only crime is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. While the douche Americans suffering throughout are just unlikeable enough to root against, their torture is not an act of revenge or catharsis for the audience. It could be anyone being torn to shreds, and Roth would still be having a blast doing it."
Eli Roth conceived Hostel after seeking extreme internet material and an alleged "murder vacation" dark-web site, aiming to escalate the gore of his prior film. The plot follows two American backpackers who are lured to a Bratislava hostel with promises of casual sex and instead enter a market where wealthy clients pay to torture and mutilate victims. The film delivers clinical, prolonged depictions of mutilation—slicing, vivisections, chainsaws, blowtorches—designed to shock rather than provide catharsis. The protagonists remain unsympathetic enough to complicate viewer alignment, and some critics read the film as a critique of Bush-era ignorance and consumerism while it helped launch a new era of boundary-pushing Hollywood horror.
Read at Inverse
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