Hostel arrives with severe condemnations as being one of the ugliest, sadistic horror films of recent years. It has also been attacked by the government of Slovakia, where it is set, as giving an awful impression of that country and its people. They are not wrong about that.

But, those of us who see most of the horror films have seen much worse. Rob Zombie’s House of a Thousand Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects were far more explicit and brutal. At least this one has something of a plausible underlying explanation of the horror – the writer-director asserts that he came across a Thai website inviting people to pay money to go and experience killing victims provided by a criminal gang.

More of a difficulty with films like Hostel (and comedies like Eurotrip which it resembles in the first part) is what religious commentators used to refer to as ‘a low moral tone’. This is not the violence and horror. This is rather the presumption that life is meant to be hedonistically self-indulgent, no matter what. The three central characters here are college students and a lecherous type from Iceland descending on Amsterdam, backpacking for ‘a good time’. Within the first twenty minutes, they are seriously stoned, have been desperate to visit a brothel, caused a loud mouthed American brawl and listened to advice about a hostel with girls readily available in Slovakia. These men act like leering adolescents, as if this was how life is to be lived. As heroes of the film, they elicit no empathy. We feel that maybe they should be sliced up sooner rather than later. It is depressing that so many film-makers assume that this is what their audience is like and that this is what they want.

In that context, the torture scenes and the killing are ugly but not as lingered upon as in many others. The violent revenge at the end makes some immediate desperate emotional sense, but…

Did you enjoy this article? Please bookmark it onto: