I put on Hostel one day as background noise to keep me company while I was going about my day, taking care of business, doing homework, et cetera. And that really tells you a lot about my expectations of this movie. But I had heard someone compare it to Fresh, essentially demoting Fresh and declaring Hostel as a superior contender in what I suppose could be dubbed ‘the genre of dismemberment’. I would be inclined to agree with that person before I watched the sequel, which makes me question Roth’s intention a lot and backpedal on some but not all of my love for this film. I had no preconceived notions about this film beyond the horror aspect and I could ascertain pretty quickly the gruesome fate that would await these three characters in Slovakia. But there were many clever subversions I did not expect. The movie is trying to say something and I’m not sure if it knows what that is or if this is just an ‘all the above’ case. Here is what I’ve managed to glean from my viewing:
We’re all just consumers in one way or another.
Maybe we should think more critically about the images we consume ( and maybe, also our food?)
We should put ourselves in the shoes of the prey that we casually gorge down in a hedonistic rush.
There is a clear correlation between sexuality and actual food consumption, no? One character even mentions that he is a vegetarian. And it is, of course, the one whose hedonism is most apparent. In other words, he refuses to eat meat, to abuse animals, but women are fair game. Josh seems to be the most virtuous of the three men, but he recoils at what might have been an advance from another man, a stranger on the train.
His killer and torturer are the same man, which is very fitting, as the torturers seem to get off on this. So food is sex and so is violence. Very standard slasher stuff but the execution is interesting to me. First Roth tortures and kills the innocent, the prototypical final guy but I suppose his lack of sexual appetite combined with the scene on the train could be read as repressed homosexuality in which case it’s just a bury your gays' situation but I doubt this. I do think we are supposed to question Josh’s sexuality but his less chauvinistic personality, and his celibacy is supposed to be his dominant trait. And we are supposed to latch onto that in the sea of exposed bodies so when he is killed it sends a message. He was just a Marion Crane.
The Scandinavian friend’s death was interestingly offscreen, which I think was smart. So when the carnage finally happens, your imaginings of his demise are likely to be more terrible than an actual depiction not to mention this type of film works best when the mutilations are spaced out. Otherwise you get fear fatigue. It just becomes a barrage of dismembered bodies onscreen and remember, the film wants you to feel the weight of the bodies you are ‘consuming’, the images that you may or may not be watching while folding clothes. So I felt it. Surprisingly I felt it. I was so looking forward to Paxton’s death at the start but by the time the movie crawled closer to that set piece, I was hoping for the guy to make it out. I audibly yelled for him to step on it when the girls who essentially sold him and his friends appeared in the street.
The way everything kind of escalated at the end was so thrilling and cathartic and strangely comedic at times. I’m surprised I haven’t heard that line—you know what line—used in third-wave feminist spaces, totally ignoring the context of selling humans to be abused. ( Albeit, I could get behind some ironic usage) Maybe that’s the point of the film, maybe this is a modern man’s secret dread, women weaponizing their sexuality so that they can have power over them by letting other men act out their fantasies. And maybe that’s why I feel the second movie misses the point, maybe even more than the third does. This movie presents itself as chauvinistic but it is truly feministic. It respects bodies. It debases them, maims some, and spares others.
It posits that men will perish at the hands of other men and women will stand amid the carnage both orchestrator and victim. Bitch and pimp. Meal and cook.
I dunno; that’s what I took from it. Kind of gross but in a good way.
