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Released by: Mill Creek Entertainment
Released on: October 9, 2012.
Director: Eli Roth
Cast: Derek Richardson, Jar Hernandez/Lauren German, Heather Matarazzo, Bijou Phillips
Year: 2006/2007
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The Movies:
HOSTEL:
When Cabin Fever became a surprise hit you knew it was only a matter of time before director Eli Roth got behind the camera for a follow up. 2005's Hostel went on to do huge box office and has spawned one sequel to date and it's the arrival of that sequel that lead to this new two-disc un-rated release of the first movie in the series. The film is the same in content here as it was on the first release, though as you'll note later in this review, a few new extra features have been thrown into the mix.
Hostel follows Josh (Derek Richardson) and his friend Paxton (Jay Hernandez), a pair of twenty-something American guys who decide to head to Europe for a backpacking vacation. The pair arrives in Amsterdam where they smoke some weed and Paxton tries to get Josh to bed down with a prostitute in hopes that it will help him get over his ex-girlfriend. While out on the town one night, the pair hook up with a local named Alex (Lubomir Bukovy) who tells the guys about a hostel in Slovakia that's supposedly full of hot Eastern European women who go crazy for American men. The pair, accompanied by an Icelandic guy named Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson) who hooks up with them along the way, decide to try their luck and it's off to Slovakia they go in hopes of scoring with hot and willing women.
When the three friends arrive, the hostel is exactly what Alex said it would be and there is no shortage at all of beautiful and very, very friendly girls wandering around. The guys figure they've hit the jackpot and almost immediately start mingling with the ladies, but they soon find out that there's more to this hostel than meets the eye. When Oli disappears, Paxton tries to figure out what happened to him and the girls convince he and Josh that he's gone to an art show. They head off to this supposed art show but it soon becomes painfully obvious that the girls are part of a bigger and far uglier plan than either Paxton or Josh could imagine.
Hostel benefits from a great premise but unfortunately it just takes too long to get going for it to work. Then there is the fact that the male leads are really little more than a couple of annoying frat boys - this makes it hard to care about them in the least and rather than root for them, we almost want them to get slaughtered right off the bat so that we don't have to listen to them. The set up for the film is completely weak, which is a shame as once the film picks up in the last forty-minutes or so, Roth shows he's very capable of directing some good, intense scenes of horror. The film does not shy away from violence or gore at all (you could make the argument that it rubs the viewer's face in it!) and there's some great, dark, gloomy atmosphere on display but there's just no tension. The film isn't scary, it's just gory.
Had Roth put more effort into crafting an interesting story out of the excellent premise, Hostel could have worked and had Roth put more effort into creating some interesting characters Hostel would have worked but sadly neither happens and we're left with a nasty, gory little movie that offers little else besides the bloodshed and the nudity. Granted, the bloodshed and the nudity are handled well and provide no small amount of exploitative content to feast your eyes one but once the film is over, nothing resonates and there's no lasting impact at all. Hostel looks good and the use of sound in the film is at times extremely impressive and there's no doubt in this reviewer's mind that Roth has it in him to make a great horror movie - but Hostel isn't it. It's a loud, noisy, bloody picture that simply burns out and fades away.
HOSTEL: PART II
Despite the fact that it's more or less the same story, just with women in the lead instead of men, Hostel: Part II somehow manages to be more fun. The story picks up where the first one left off with an opening scene that shows us what happens when those who escape the company are found (with a Luc Merenda cameo) - but we won't spoil that here. From there, we meet a trio of students studying art (under the tutelage of the still beautiful Edwige Fenech): Beth (Lauren German), Lorna (Heather Matarazzo) and Whitney (Bijou Phillips) who change their vacation plans at the last minute to head to Eastern Europe for a stay at a spay with an art model they've befriended named Axelle (Vera Jordonova).
They arrive and check into their hotels and as soon as they're able head out to check out the local scene. They drink, they dance, they party it up with some of the young men they meet and shy Lorna even picks up a guy dashing enough to take her on a boat ride! Bad move, Lorna - Beth warns her not to go out alone but she doesn't listen and never comes back. Before long, Whitney has disappeared to, and then eventually Beth wakes up inside a compound where rich people pay very good money to torture and kill beautiful young women such as her.
While the film suffers from many of the same flaws as its predecessor - poor character development, predictability and playing to clichés this second film is more entertaining than the one that came before it. It moves at a much faster pace and three women victims in the picture are slightly more likeable than the male victims in the original were. While the story does seem like it's going to try some interesting things with two of the potential killers, one of whom shows some sincere reluctance which contrasts with his friends almost insincere enthusiasm, but this doesn't wind up differentiating the second film from the first very much at all.
Again, the film's strong suits are more superficial than anything else, like the use of (some admittedly pretty extreme) gore effects, highlighted by a Bathory-esque scene in which a woman bathes in blood, and the use of sound but it all happens fast enough that it's not so bad. Towards the end the gore effects get so over the top that they border on comedic - and you get the impression that this was intentional. The film also features a few amusing cameos. Aside from the aforementioned walk-ons from Merenda and Fenech, we also get a quick bit with none other than Ruggero Deodato who plays, what else, a cannibal. Roth's not reinventing the wheel here, he's giving the built in audience that this sequel has pretty much exactly what they'd want out of the movie.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Hostel and Hostel 2 both arrive on Blu-ray in 2.35.1 anamorphic widescreen 1080p AVC encoded transfers that looks about as good you'd expect given the film's recent vintage and taking into account its grimy, bleak color scheme. Both of the movies make use of a very dark color scheme, lots of moldy looking green hues are used, with tints of rust colors, browns, and pale whites. The film is very cold looking, appropriately so, and the transfer does a good job of replicating this. Detail is fairly strong, black levels as well, and while there's a bit of grain here and there you won't likely notice any actual print damage. Flesh tones look decent, and despite some banding, some erratic black tonal shifts, and some darker spots that break up a little bit, there's little to complain about here. It's not a perfect looking picture, but it suits the tone of the movie well.
The primary sound mixes on this disc are English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio mixes, though the second film does get an alternate language French Dolby Digital 5.1 mix. Dialogue is always well balanced and easy to understand but the levels get a bit high during some of the scenes involving the torture of various characters, what with all of the screaming going on. Bass response is strong, you'll notice this with the score in spots and during a few well timed bursts of activity which provide a good amount of directional effects as well. There aren't any problems with hiss or distortion to complain about and while the score gets a little bit buried underneath all of the mayhem from time to time, this is, overall, quite a strong and active mix. Optional subtitles are provided in English only.
Extras? Outside of a static menu and episode selection, not a one.
The Final Word:
Previous Blu-ray releases of these two movies have had a whole lot more extra content than this reissue from Mill Creek but those previous releases have also been quite a bit more expensive. If you don't care about the extras so much and want the two Hostel movies, in their uncut form, in your collection this is a great way to do it. The audio and video is solid and the price is certainly right.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
What's more is that Roth really gets how to properly pay tribute to the genre films he loved. It's not through ripping off lines of dialogue or shots or narrative structures, but through filling his movies with cameos and in-jokes only other genre film fans would understand.
I mean, Deadoto playing a classy cannibal is enough to make me love these movies and have the utmost respect for Roth.
*spoilers* At first it looks like one character is going to be the protagonist as he's the sole sympathetic male character but then Roth kills him off in Hitchcockian (is that a word?) maneuver and it's not until we're down to the one surviving male character that our sympathies are engaged again. There's also a whole overt homosexual theme going on between one of the main killers (his relationship with the younger guy at the beginning and his end in the bathroom) that is interesting in a horror film. *end spoiler*
I'm not sure if I'm reading into this but I think Roth may be smarter than many give him credit for with all the frat boy talk, after all in the press junkets for Inglorious Basterds is was him that had the wit to describe the film as a 'Jewish revenge fantasy,' something that Tarantino disagreed with. I think IB would have been better if Tarantino had actually stuck more with Roth's idea of the film, as I think it was all too clear in IB that Tarantino didn't really have a clear idea what the point of his film was in the first place (besides being 'awesome').