Unrated Runtime: 94 Minutes Release: 2005
Starring: Jay Hernanadez, Derek Richardson, Eythor Gudjonsson, Barbara Nedeljakova, Jan Vlasak, Jana Kaberakova, Jennifer Lim,
Directed and Written by: Eli Roth
The Story:
When I was in college my roommate and I would talk about how cool it would be if we could just backpack through Europe. I'm glad we didn't. American Werewolf in London has shown us how dangerous backpacking in the UK can be. You get cursed with lycanthropy and all....and now Hostel has shown us that the Continent itself is full of crazy-ass maniacs that not only want to kill you, they want to torture you first. Eeek. I work with a guy from Slovakia. If he ever asks me to visit his home country I might have to kick his ass. (just kidding, Marko, we're cool....don't kill me)
College buds Paxton and Josh along with Oli....another traveler they've hooked up with...are partying through Europe, and landed in Amsterdam before heading to barcelona. Everyone wants to go to Amsterdam. I guess because you can smoke more weed than Cheech, Chong and Dave Chappelle put together. They seem to be having a great time even if they are buffoons. I guess I can excuse the buffoon part. Europeans always act like americans (Oli however is from Iceland) come to their cities and act like drunken clowns. I got news for you.....Europeans do that too. I was in Paris when the World Cup was going on....I couldn't sleep because of the nonstop partying going on outside my hotel when France won their game on July 2nd.
Anyway, the three friends meet a slimy euro-pimp kid in a hostel with a boil on his lip. I didn't catch his name so I'll call him Herpes Lip. Well, Herpes Lip tells these horny jokers that if they want to get laid with hot hot hot girls they need to head for this one hostel in Slovakia. He even shows them pictures of the girls doing him, and its obvious the girls knew they were being photographed. Josh is the serious one, and even though he's a bit skeptical, he listens to the little head. Paxton is all for it, and Oli, the party animal that he is, is ready to go. So instead of going to Barcelona where Paxton has claimed in dialogue they have a friend they can stay with, they head for some crap hole town in Slovakia.
Listen, Droogies, you don't have to have even been to Europe to see how crack brained that plan is. Barcelona....Slovakia.....Barcelona...Slovakia.....hmmmm....which would you choose. Need I mention that Barcelona is cool in itself, but is also a 1 hour drive to some of the hottest beaches in Spain....and the beaches come with a lot of mega-hot babes from all over Europe and its topless? (I've been there 3 times and I'm probably going back) Now compare that with some [unwrite] hole town in Slovakia. You know, Slovakia, the place that probably only Slovakians, Vampires and soldiers that fought there can tell you about. Yeah.
On the train to Toilet-ville they meet a freaky old guy who likes to eat with his fingers. He freaks Josh out enough that you know he'll be in the movie later.
The three morons get there and meet a few of the other people staying in this magic-get-laid Hostel. Two japanese girls (I only got one name from them, Kana....and she's the only one that counts) and some girls sharing the room with them, Svetlana and Natalya. Naturally these guys are happy that they have to share a room with hot chicks. Amazingly the girls are impressed by Oli showing them a face drawn on his ass in magic marker. So they get laid. Then the next day Oli has vanished. But he sent a picture and a message to Paxton's cell phone saying "sayonara" (written in Japanese even) with him and Kana's friend in it. Oops...let me correct that....the picture went to Kana who in turn confronted Paxton and Josh asking why her friend would ditch her with their friend. She then resent it to Paxton. Josh and Paxton are worried, thinking that Oli wouldn't just ditch them like that. They look for him, but to no avail. Finally Paxton says to Josh that hell, they didn't really know him. He was fun to travel with but now he's gone his own way and they should party another night here in Turd-Town and then head to Barcelona.
Leaving isn't that easy though. The two remaining guys head out to the local disco for one last night of Slovakian partying and hopefully more sex, but Josh doesn't feel well and heads back to the Hostel where he passes out and awakens in an unknown room, chained to a chair and naked except for his man-panties. Paxton, still at the disco with Natalya and Svetlana begins to feel ill and goes to the bathroom. But he opens the wrong door and gets locked in a storage room.
Paxton lucked out. Its obvious they've been drugged. But Josh finds himself at the mercy of....Freaky Finger Food Guy from the train! FFG then proceeds to torture him with black and decker power tools while he begs for help and mercy. Finally FFG tells him he can go, but only after cutting his tendons in his ankles. Josh can't walk and he crawls miserably to the door when FFG changes his mind and kills him.
I've thought long and hard about what to say to a person that was about torture and kill me in that fashion. But movies have shown me that things like "I'll give you money", "Please don't do this./hurt me" and "I won't tell anyone if you let me go" just don't work. The only thing I can think of is "If you kill me I'll haunt you for the rest of your life and when you die I'll be there in Hell to f*** you up for eternity.". You might want to write that down in case you have to use it.
Paxton awakens and is let out of the storage room in the morning but he can't find any of his friends, including Kana. He gets his cell phone stolen buy this mob of angry 10 year olds that appear and hit people up for candy via the threat of an ass whooping. I'm not kidding. I had no idea that Slovakia had roving gangs of rug rats threatening people, but there ya go. Finally he finds Svetlana and Natalya at a dive bar and angrily demands to know where his friends are. They try to bull[unwrite] him, but he's having none of it. Natalya tells him they went to an art show. Paxton demands to be taken there to see them. Natalya agrees and like a dummy he gets in the car with her and some quiet but ominously dangerous guy. The art show is apparently in this old, wrecked up factory. Which if you look closely is in the background of the photo Kana's friend sent saying "Sayonara!". Now I damn sure wouldn't go into this place under those circumstances.....but then I wouldn't have gone to Slovakia just to get laid....but Paxton does. In the dark dank hallways Natalya shows him a room where some masked nut job cutting up the body of Josh. Paxton's is naturally upset, angry and calls Natalya an F***ing bitch. She laughs and says now he's HER bitch as two burly thugs haul him into a different room and chain him to a chair. Where's Jack Bauer when you need him?
Some weirdo that looks like a younger Lance Henriksen comes in and begins torturing him. The guy doesn't speak english but he seems to be getting off at Paxton's pleading and cries of agony. But he screws up. Paxton has thrown up and bled on the floor (especially when Lance Henriksen Lookalike cut off three of his fingers with a chainsaw) and he slips on it. The chain saw falls from his grasp and mortally wounds him. Paxton 's hands are freed, though he's still missing 3 digits and chained to the chair by his feet. But he gets a gun Lance Henriksen Lookalike had and manages to kill the burly thug who comes in to investigate.. He then gets the keys and frees himself.
Lets cut to the chase...I always do at this point in a movie review....Paxton finds from another guy in a locker room in the building that this is some kind of dangerous game setup. Bored, rich sadistic mofo's pay to come here and torture and kill dumb schmucks that thought Slovakia was a vacation spot. Paxton, still hurt, but still tickin' manages to escape and find a car outside that he can still...but he hears the screams of Kana and goes back in to save her. She's been brutally tortured and honestly, she's missing half of her face including an eye. Still he frees her and they make a run for it. (Though I'd think both of them would have passed out or bled to death by now) Paxton's plan? Go to the police? Take Kana (who seriously needs medical attention...and really, so does he) to a doctor? Nope. He wants to go to the train station and head straight out of dodge. Not that I can blame him for that. But the burly thugs in the torture factory follow them. The only cool thing about the car chase is that Paxton sees Natalya, Svetlana and Herpes Lip and runs them over. Well that and he manages to sic the crazed, candy robbing kids on his pursuers.
Alas, Kana kills herself at the train station. Paxton makes it out of town, but he sees FFG at another stop. FFG has no idea that Paxton is alive. In the train station restroom FFG sits down to take a sociopathic dump, but Paxton sneaks in, kills him way to fast and leaves. The credits roll. (I'd have tortured that bastard for five more minutes. With my remaining 7 fingers I'd shove his balls in his mouth and make him eat my excrement...I'd...oh....sorry)
So what have he learned here my droogies? Never go to Eastern Europe but if you do, bring your own liquor and a gun. Slovakia=bad, Barcelona=good and if you meet a dutch man that like to eat with his fingers, kill the bastard.
Best Lines: “Can't you keep your Viking ass in your pants for like 2 seconds? "- Josh gets upset when Oli puts his ass in his face.
Are you kidding me?
1.) Just so's I can clear this up for any of you young'uns that have never been to, but may travel through Europe....starting a fight in a club in Amsterdam will probably get your ass beat up. Especially if you don't speak dutch. Yelling "I'm an American! I have rights!" in practically any bad situation in Europe will get you beat up even worse (sometimes by other Americans, because you're making us all look like morons) and possibly kidnapped by someone who wants to cut your head off for Allah.
2.) I never knew that the secret to scoring with hot, naked eurobabes was to paint a face on my ass and act like a complete drunken imbecile.
3.) You know, if I were a crazy killer guy and I had kidnapped someone and hidden them away in my Den o' Death to torture, and I wanted to send my victims friends a photo of the victim before the kidnapping on a camera phone in order to make it look like no ill had fallen towards him, I wouldn't have the location of the Den O' Death as a background in the photo. Just sayin'.
4.) Apparently people don't do things like go into shock and pass out in the universe this movie operates in. Paxton has three fingers sawn off by a chainsaw and manages to escape....Kana has an eye ripped out and she's still able to function pretty well. I'm not saying its impossible, and hell, if my life were on the line, I'd hope I'd be able to, but lets face it....most of us would be babbling idiots from the pain alone, not to mention blood loss. Sheeee-it, I stubbed my two last night and I thought I'd pass out then. (It really freakin' hurt!)
5.) Note to self: According to this flick if you're ever attacked by sadistic sociopathic killers in a small eastern european hellhole of a town don't bother to stop, seek medical attention or yell for help in a crowded street. I don't know why but Paxton doesn't. Amazingly, no one takes not of Kana bleeding all over herself while she's in plain sight.
6.) Does Andrew Bontreger still do the "Things I learned" stuff in his reviews? Well if he does, I got one for ya, Andrew....I learned that in a Hostel in Europe you can get nonstop weed and sex. There is absolutely no kind of control about it. I'm surprised Hostels aren't overrun with horny Americans teens right now.
Nudity and Sex: Sex and nudity are seen, but none of it is particularly hot.
Huh?:
In Slovakia, gangs of little kids pose a high level threat to the unwary. At first I thought, "They're just a buncha kids, stomp 'em and go on by.". Yikes! These little bastards killed two fully grown armed men. Next time a kid asks me for candy I'm springing for a Giant-sized Snickers bar and a few kit-kats.
Didja know you can run over people in Slovakia and no one calls the police? Not that I blame Paxton for doing so...if I saw the evil bitch that got me into that kind of mess I'd have taken the extra time to back over her a few times.
Maybe I wasn't horny enough when I was younger. I just know that I wouldn't travel from Amsterdam to some bum[unwrite] Egypt like [unwrite] hole in Slovakia just because some greasy euro-trash guy with a herpes blister (!) on his lip told me I could screw every chick in the town. Especially when I already had plans (and a place to stay) in Barcelona! What were these guys thinking?
How could the locals and the cops for that matter not know that something was going on in that town? Too many people must have been reported missing by the number of bodies that were in the warehouse. Not every cop or person in the town could have been in on it....if they were, the killers wouldn't have to conceal what they were doing.
I mentioned this before but it bears being mentioned again...why would anyone being grabbed in a disco in another country shout "I'm an American!" like its some kind of get of jail free card? Unless you're an ambassador or something thats only inciting the angry mob to kick your teeth in even more. You're better off shouting "I'm a Klingon Warrior!". It might make them back off because they'll think you're nuts. Never shout something like "I'm a black belt!" unless you are, though. Saying that never scares anyone and you'll get called on it.
The Final Judgment: Hostel wasn't too bad. Other than the fact that the three friends were nincompoops there's nothing super-annoying about them. Its not a revolution in horror movies or anything, but its not a complete suck fest either. It's certainly better than Eli Roth's other movie, Cabin Fever.
