Eli Roth’s ghoulish latest forms a catalogue of creative carnage recalling any number of demented Italian horror fantasies and the always disquieting surrealism of Takeshi Miike (who cameos here). But despite Roth’s audacious use of squelching gristle and raw tendons, Hostel pivots around an old-fashioned standard within the genre – if you fuck, you will die. Or, more accurately in this case, if you backpack into Slovakia chasing easy eastern bloc girls, you will find yourself at the mercy of a sinister snuff ring.
Such is the fate of Hostel’s youthful sex-tourists. By the time our two brash American travellers (Hernandez and Richardson) realise that the wild sex offered by local nymphs will land them in a dungeon where high paying customers will get medieval with surgical implements, it’s far too late.
Even before the blood starts to splatter, Roth makes merry with the menace. His Europe is satirically and horrifically distorted through the eyes of our visiting Americans (‘Amsterdam is like, sooo boring’), like Summerisle, only bigger. The local children are all roving thieves. Their parents seem to have wandered in from the final scene of Bride Of Frankenstein, buying Ladas along the way. Even the hot and usually naked chicks (the director has admitted he has no interest in learning the meaning of the word gratuitous) quickly resemble the comelier offspring of Max Schrek.Everybody else appears as a gay predator, a homicidal maniac or a foot soldier with the Russian mafia.
It’s the same jape at the expense of US insularity (‘What do they call a Whopper in Paris’) that informed Pulp Fiction, so we shouldn’t be too surprised to read the legend – ‘Quentin Tarantino Presents’ before the opening credits.
One imagines too, that QT was only delighted to lend the brand. With Hostel, Roth has crafted a proper exploitation flick where everybody gets it in most revolting manner imaginable. We can think of no higher form of entertainment. Well, maybe bear baiting.