HOSTEL

Two American guys, Paxton and Josh, along with Oli, an Icelander they met in Amsterdam, are traveling around Europe in search of strong emotions. One night, they learn that in a country near Bratislava, Slovakia, there is a hostel where it is possible to meet beautiful and available Eastern European girls. The three friends immediately set off and, once arrived at the indicated hostel, realize that everything corresponds to reality; in fact, they quickly make the acquaintance of two uninhibited girls, Natalia and Svetlana. But the next morning, Oli disappears and the two friends, thinking he has gone away with a Japanese tourist, continue to have fun, until Josh also disappears. Then Paxton will put himself on his trail, discovering a horrible underground trade where the costly merchandise is human life. Box office hit in its home country and accompanied by an effective advertising campaign, "Hostel" also arrives in Italy, the second work of young Eli Roth ("Cabin fever"), an irreverent director who loves the horror genre and knows how to do his job as a dealer of chills. In his previous film, he paid homage to the new horror of the 70s/80s, with "Hostel" he throws himself into the sado-thriller vein, very much in vogue in recent times thanks to the two successful chapters of "Saw" and some Asian films ("Audition" first and foremost) which Roth declares to have been inspired by. With the blessing of Quentin Tarantino, who appears as executive producer, this film has made a splash at the US box office and is preparing to replicate it in Europe, evidently thanks to a perfect alchemy (at least listening to the advertising slogans) between sex and extreme violence; hot topics that have always stimulated the curiosity of the viewer. In fact, "Hostel" does not spare us the most "strong" details and leaves very little to the imagination: on the one hand, we have a first part that takes the viewer into "American Pie" territory (although we are much closer to "EuroTrip" by Jeff Schaffer), with rather unpleasant young men eager for hard experiences that only the Old Continent seems able to offer, and a first hint of violence, only suggested. But in the second part, we venture into a microcosm of perversion and explicit violence with mutilations, retching, screams of pain and blood in liters. The viewer is able to really perceive the pain that the protagonists of the film feel and in some cases may be really disgusted, as happens in the terrible scene of the eye gouged out and cut off with a small pair of scissors. Unfortunately, however, the film stops there: a lot of violence for violence's sake and nothing else. The story counts very little and the screenplay seems almost a pretext (probably the script by Roth counts a few dozen pages) to show how far human perversion can go. From afar, an echo of social criticism resounds that underscores how empty and bigoted young Americans can be, with a condemnation of sex tourism, and how much cruelty and sadism economic wealth can convey, but we do not want to overbalance and perhaps it is better to think that Roth wanted to make a simple and true, as well as cunning, horror, devoid of any intellectual presumption. Effective the dirty photography and functional the sets, especially in the reconstruction of the factory-slaughterhouse where the young tourists are massacred. Naturally, an applause goes to the make-up effects by Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger. Furthermore, the film is rich in citations from the pulp-horror world: ranging from "Pulp Fiction" (you can catch a glimpse of a sequence from the film on TV in the hostel) to "Suicide Club", passing through "Don't Open That Door". In conclusion, "Hostel" is a notable mix of nudity and gratuitous atrocities, certainly not suitable for the occasional viewer; the film is so rich in emphasis on violence and the desire to shock that an effective film construction and a convincing plot are left in the background. Enjoyable but does not fully convince. Curiosity. In the film, the director Takashi Miike and Eli Roth himself appear in brief cameos. It seems that the facts narrated in "Hostel" are inspired by a practice really widespread; in fact, the director himself came across a Thai site where, by paying exorbitant sums, it is possible to torture young consenting individuals to death. Part of the proceeds should go to the families of the victims. The film in question has managed to raise many controversies in its home country and also in Italy it has been the protagonist of a campaign conducted by the Codacons for the removal of advertising posters from the walls of the cities.