So I finally got around to watching Hostel (2005), only six years too late but with the Human Centipede debacle still raging it felt appropriate. As one of the catalysts for the torture porn genre I had high hopes for the shock factor of Hostel and its predecessor Saw (2004) did a cracking job of utilising shock values with a big twist and a strong story. The notion behind Hostel, of a Slovakian Hostel that lures backpackers in with the promise of beautiful sex obsessed females only for the backpackers to become part of a sick ‘art exhibition’, is original and suitably torture filled. The build up is very slow and for the first half of the film it felt more like Eurotrip than a horror film, the second half truly delivers though and I was on the edge of my seat throughout. It was not as gruesome as I was expecting, with only one extremely cringe worthy moment involving an eye, but I was rather glad of this lack of graphic visceral gore.
Hostel will satisfy a torture porn horror film craving but it is by no means shocking or surprising. The acting is pretty good on all parts and the locations are well thought out, although the film doesn’t paint Slovakia in a very good light. The story is not predictable and it was refreshing to see a main protagonist who used his head and made truly human decisions. However, this is not an affecting psychological horror film that will reach your core and haunt you for weeks after, it is merely a physical endurance test; how much torture can you handle? With 2 more parts to the Hostel series I cannot imagine what they have to offer that hasn’t already been dealt with in the first film and I probably will not watch them to find out. Hostel is nowhere near as first-rate as Saw but it is good at what it does do which is to offer an original story with lashings of what you would expect from the genre and a little of what you wouldn’t expect.
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