Think about that saying for a second. What do the naysayers, critics, fanboys, complainers, gorehounds, and bloggers mean when they call something "torture porn?" That is a matter of perception. When bandied about by those critical of the horror genre (or rather, this particular cycle of it), it implies a complete absence of value and artistic merit, existing only to display simulated cruelty to sate the questionable appetites of a small group of weirdos. To the fans and supporters, it can be seen as a sort of badge of (dubious) honor, shouting out the intentions of the filmmakers to "not pull any punches" and to go where others have been unable or unwilling to go previously. One side uses the term for it's pure perjorative effect, while the other uses it in a mocking, flippant tone. And, most bizarre of all to your Vaultkeeper, is the fact that entire phrase itself is unecessary and redundant -- we already have a term used to describe these types of horror films:
Exploitation.
Truly that is what this new subgenre falls under, including the two films we will be examining today, Eli Roth's Hostel and Hostel Part 2. "Survival horror" like these films, or the Saw series, or the derivative Captivity or Turistas, have grown out of the older exploitation set by taking advantage of the changes in public perception and taste to create something memorable. And when you get right down to it, that's the main gist of explotative filmmaking -- making sure the audience is so repulsed by what you are offering that they cannot resist seeing it. It's a risky venture, but the upside is so great that filmmakers keep going back to the well over and over, and this crop of films are just the latest wave in that cycle.
The first film opens with three friends -- American backapckers Josh (the shy one) and Paxton (the brash one), plus an Icelander they have befriended name Oli -- on the hunt for drugs and ass in Amsterdam. There, they run into another guest at their hostel who tells them that if they want real action, the place to go is Slovakia. Our trio boards a train, and soon finds themselves in a palacial hostel outside of Bratislava. There, they are quickly latched onto by a trio of babes, including Svetlana and Natalya, who pair off with the Americans, who take them to a spa, out partying, and end up doing the horizontal mambo with as well. Things take a turn when first Oli, then a Japanese tourist go missing, evidently having run off together. In short order, Josh too goes missing, and Paxton begins to try to track his friend down.
Problem is, the audience already knows where Josh is: locked inside a filthy, dungeon-like room, Josh is being brutally tortured by a strange Dutch businessman they met earlier. It seems that this nut has paid quite a large amount of money to live out his fantasy of being a surgeon using Josh as his "patient." The Dutchman uses a power drill to cut Josh, then slices his Achilles tendon and watches him try to escape. It's a nasty sequence, and Roth's camera is unblinking in the face of the human carnage. But the cruelty here is nothing which would cause a veteran exploitation viewer to bat an eye, let alone balk at. It's grue from the school of Cannibal Holocaust (Roth's main inspiration and idol being Deodato, even) -- and while that is old hat to gorehounds, it is pretty shocking to run of the mill theater-goers.
Needless to say, Paxton ends up being tricked into the dungeon, and strapped to his very own torture chair. He manages to escape though (through possibly the most hilarious scene featuring a chainsaw since Leatherface), and is now trying to escape with the missing Japanese girl -- and survive to boot.
The film itself is interesting if disappointing. The first half an hour is a brilliant set-up, as there is next to nothing to betray Roth's sinister intentions, instead playing like a sort of coming-of-age tale for Josh and Paxton. Only once the second act starts do things start to take a turn for the worse, at least for our protagonists. There's plenty of talk about various themes -- the exploitation of the poor East by the rich West, finding your own path in life, doing whatever you can to save someone, the sick habits of the idle rich -- but they are not addressed at length enough to really develop beyond the seed. I suppose it's possible that Roth wants to leave things open to audience interpretation, but it left me feeling unfulfilled, as if he was rushing towards more violence. Roth's earlier film Cabin Fever is similar to Hostel insofar as both films have great thesis lines but fail to really deliver on the promies of the concept.
Part of the problem is that we only get little glimpses of what kind of person would purchase such a session. The Dutchman is only somewhat sympathetic when we meet him before the dungeon, and the other workers are just faceless, nameless Europeans. There is one obnoxious American businessman Paxton runs into, and while he seems like the kind of asshole who would pay to murder someone, we don't have much time to really explore what that means. Jigsaw is a fully realized and developed character, so when he plays one of his games, we have some insight into his mindset and motivation. We don't get that here, which creates a certain alien feeling in the viewer, which, I must admit, has it's own benefits. But it feels like a wasted opportunity not to peer deeper into that aspect. Roth does put together the survival aspects quite well, though, and his direction is crisp and the pace tight. He's also not afraid of a little comic relief, in the form of a pre-teen gang of thugs roving the town, holiding people up for bubblegum. It's not a poorly made film, and it's not a bad film, it's just somewhat defined by what it is missing almost as much as what is posseses.
Hostel is not nearly as bad, nor good, nor, honestly, as gruesome as it's reputation would have you believe. It's a solid survival horror entry, but ranks firmly behind Saw and it's sequels.
After wrapping up the loose ends from the first film, Hostel Part 2 focuses on a trio of American girls studying art in Rome: Beth, the nice girl who is apparently rich beyond all concept, Whitney, the flighty, sexy party girl, and Lorna, the quirky, journal addicted wallflower. Taking a train to Prague, they meet the lovely Axelle when she recovers Lorna's stolen iPod. Axelle invites them to come with her to a spa in Slovakia, the girls decide to join her, and soon enough wind in the same hostel as the guys from the first film (unsurprisingly).
Once the girls check in, though, then things start to get interesting. The goofy front desk guy Jedi (yes, Jedi) scans all of their passports and posts the girls as online auctions, leading to a flurry of activity across the US (and ostensibly, the world) as bidders put in their offers to try to "win" each of the girls. The auctions for Beth and Whitney are won by Todd, as part of a birthday gift for his friend Stuart. At this point the narrative splits (and occasionally intersects), as we follow the girls as Axelle charms them, leading to Lorna's eventually disappearance, as well as following the overly excited and eager Todd and the unsure Stuart as they wait for their turns in the dungeons.
It's this aspect of the film which makes Hostel Part 2 superior to it's predecessor, and on par with some of the best horror films of the last decade. Roth takes his time and explores the personality of a person who would pay to slay. Todd is your typical loudmouthed executive, pushy and domineering; someone I am sure most of us have met or worked with at least once in our lives. Todd bullies and berates Stuart anytime that he shows any doubt about what they are there for. Stuart's enthusiasm is lacking, but at the same time the audience knows that if he didn't want to be there, he wouldn't be; male ego will account for a lot of seemingly inexplicable actions, but there is a limit to it. No, deep in his subconscious, Stuart wants to be a killer, to feel the visceral rush and earn the intangible fear which Todd assures him will come after. These two present two different views of wanton arrogance and power, as they take in a plush European holiday the whole time hanging onto their pages from the murder club.
Furthermore, the events which unfold once all four of our characters (Lorna having been killed off in a grisly setpiece by a modern day Elizabeth B�thory) are in their respective dungeons add to the layers of complexity and address some of the themes lacking from the first. While Todd is all too eager to get to work with Whitney, Stuart is more hesitant with Beth -- at first. As he becomes more enraged, Beth has to think quickly in order to stave off disfigurement and death. Due to the victims being all female this time out, the unfortunate spectre of rape does pop up for a little bit, but even when Stuart has Beth pinned down on the floor to have his way with her, it's still clear that Beth is in charge, and it's only a matter of time before the roles reverse. They eventually do, in more ways than one, and it leads to a climax which surely left the audience squirming.
It seems with this, his third feature, Roth has finally come into his own as a director. Everything clicks, and unlike his other work the viewer is not left holding the bag when it comes to answering the hard questions. These added details -- how the "Elite Hunting" club works, what its clientele is, and so forth -- make the film, and elevate it above simple exploitation. Not that there isn't that -- in spades. Lorna's murder is disturbing and disgusting, but again, not anything which we haven't seen in this type of film before. The effects are better, certainly, and the context is unsettling, but I think the outcry over these scenes has to do with the cinematic vocabulary of those crying out -- if you've watched Cannibal Ferox, then this is nothing all that new from a gore standpoint. The difference is in the construction of the shots involves and Roth's ability to create suspense within the context -- it's not just the old splatter for everyone to see, instead, things take their time developing, which sends the audience into a convulsion of shudders. Similarly, the climactic scene with Beth and Stuart has been done in this genre before, but never with such panache and viscerous impact.
One can only hope that this is the film on which Roth builds his career. He is a talented young man, certainly worthy of being included in the "splat pack" he is usually lumped together with. He'd already proven that he can whip up a plot conceit, but with Hostel Part 2 he proves that he has the shot-calling chops to be worthy of his reputation. Is it too much to hope that the next feature we get from him will be Thanksgiving (NSFW)? (The best part of that piece: "This February." That cracks me up every time.)
And as to the question of "torture porn:" it comes down to taste, really. Hostel and its ilk are simply high-profile targets for those who are not horror fans to vent their frustrations with what they see as "cheap" filmmaking. They don't seem to understand the fact that "cheap" filmmaking is the point of exploitation cinema, and that by giving Roth and company all this attention, they are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing. Like everything, survial horror and exploitation come in waves, and in a few years we will have moved onto anothe subgenre for for the bloggers to complain about. But that's alright, really -- because we'll still have horror gems like Hostel Part 2 to enjoy.