Hostel (2006)

A Place to Slay

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

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I was not the biggest fan of director Eli Roth's Cabin Fever, but he has made up for it with this vicious slice of intriguing nastiness. Rather than slavishly following a formula or paying tribute to an earlier film, it strips down to the basics of human depravity. It doesn't even have a single "Freddy Krueger" type villain. In it, three backpackers, Americans Paxton (Jay Hernandez), Josh (Derek Richardson) and Icelander Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson) party in Amsterdam. They get wind of a village, Bratislava, in which sexy women abound and there are few men to satisfy their needs. When they check into their hostel, they find two willing girls, Natalya (Barbara Nedeljakova) and Svetlana (Jana Kaderabkova), already waiting in their room. Of course there's a catch, and Roth feeds it to us a little bit a time, while simultaneously subverting the traditional male-female horror movie roles. It gets pretty grisly, but it's fairly unique and it has already started a new subgenre.

Starring: Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, Eythor Gudjonsson, Barbora Nedeljáková, Jana Kaderabrova, Jan Vlasák, Rick Hoffman, Jennifer Lim, Takashi Miike
Written by: Eli Roth
Directed by: Eli Roth
MPAA Rating: R for brutal scenes of torture and violence, strong sexual content, language and drug use
Running Time: 94 minutes
Date: September 27, 2006