Hostel - Jeff's Take

Well, The Jesus allowed me to do this. She asked "Why not have dueling reviews?" So what the hell. I agree. Screw adding reviews as comments. (The Dudes of Horror can be fickle folk.) The Jesus says we can have every review as its own post. I agree. The Jesus says "Hostel" rates two-and-a-half to three Georges. I disagree...

...but not vehemently. I watched "Hostel" for the first time on my flight back from Colorado just following the "8 Films to Die For" horror film festival. Donny and I watched it on my PSP. That is, until I fell asleep. I finally got back to it this past week. And fell asleep again. FINALLY I finished watching the damn thing this morning. After a brief period of self-reflection regarding whether or not I have narcolepsy, I finally subjected the film to my increasingly tried-and-true George Formula. This was my original assessment:

Boobs: 2
Boo: 0
Ewww: 1
New: .5
Spew: .5

If you add it all up, "Hostel" strolls around Jeff Land with 4 Georges in his posse. "What?" I exclaimed to myself. "Four Georges? This can't be right!"

So I began reevaluating the components of my score. There were plenty of breasts bared in this film. Top notch breasts belonging to many different women whose names all end in "kova." Certainly above average. Gratuitous, even. I could shave off half a point, but no more. But certainly this film deserved at least a 1.5 for creeping people out, right?

And so it went with the other categories. For every half a point I could shave off of one, I could argue that another should be raised half a point. There was no escaping that "Hostel" had four pieces of George screaming in its dungeon.

So why did I feel like it didn't deserve the rating? I was halfway into figuring that out when I fell asleep again. And then it came to me in a dream. A dream about the hype of this film and the shameless name-dropping of a certain executive producer. The inference made by the marketeers that we were in for a brutal display of horrific events. Events which would scar our minds and forevermore cause us to shit blood whenever someone spoke with a German accent.

When I woke up from the hype, I knew why this movie rated so well. "Hostel" gets a high rating because it manages to do nothing new; instead, it does some of the best things rather well. The sum of this is that we get something that is effectively new: a torture flick with redeeming qualities. Whether you love or loathe the main characters you can recognize them as believable archetypes and suspend your disbelief enough to be genuinely fearful of sleeping with strange women near Bratislava. Especially if you're a frat boy and your parents named you "Paxton". The unsuspecting-victims-run-into-the-wrong-people story complication finds its 5,000th reincarnation here, but is presented with a good pace, a fresh location, and bountiful breasts. The acting is solid, especially for the genre. Rick Hoffman was excellent in a scene that was as tense as it was darkly amusing.

There's even a cameo by Takashi Miike.

All things considered, I have to say that this is probably the epitome of a four on the Georgian Scale for me. It's likable, memorable, and worthy of recommendation... but there's something missing that keeps it from being a horror classic.