Howling at 'Hostel Part II'

Wow. People are getting so tooth-gnashingly indignant over Hostel Part II that I might actually feel compelled to go out and see the thing. I do not count this as a positive development in my life. But still. Man. David "yes you did, you invaded" Poland, making sure you know that the version of the movie he watched was a DVD bootleg, which absolves him from, I dunno, something, gets very exercised over a torture scene featuring Heather Matarazzo (Dawn Weiner? Really?) which he calls "the most disgusting, degrading, misogynistic, soulless shit I have ever seen in a movie that is going to be released widely in this country."

As I said, wow. Leaving aside whether it's "misogynistic" or just "misogynist" (people have been mixing the two up incorrectly for so long that I don't even know what's right anymore), what I really like here is "in a movie that is going to be released widely in this country." No, what I like isn't the labored passive voice. It's just that, hey, David—what about the stuff you've seen that isn't going to be widely released in this country? 'Cos I've got an all-region DVD player, man. Nudge nudge, wink wink.

He continues in the same vein for some time—"stupid, masturbatory, poorly directed shit piece"—shit piece?—"of horror porn..." and then lets you and me and everyone we know know that if he and director Eli Roth "crossed paths, I would refuse to shake his hand."

That'll teach him.

Poland's arch-nemesis Jeffrey Wells attempts to preempt a certain criticism by saying some "will call me old-school and fuddy-duddyish" before asking "is there anything viewers won't stand for?"

Well, sure. I doubt that viewers whose taste skews more to Merchant/Ivory than Lucio Fulci will take well to Hostel Part II. Hostel Part II's core demographic will, however, likely lap up the film's depradations. That answer your question?

Wells further muses: "One line that will never be crossed is dog torture." Sorry, Jeff, but like that woman in that old life insurance commercial sez, "Noyoor rawng!" Once the market for it is located and established, dog torture will be in. As long as it's simulated.

Why am I feeling so flippant? In part because Poland and Wells, among others are rising so beautifully to the bait. (James Wolcott, who I won't link to—it's a Vanity Fair blog, you can find it—goes so far as to compare Hostel Part II presenter Quentin Tarantino to Charles Graner; that's high dudgeon indeed. Nice try, Percy Dovetonsils, but I doubt you'll see Tarantino brought to trial soon.) The L.A. Times Patrick Goldstein makes a more interesting point than he realizes when he says "The next time you see a 'Hostel: Part II' poster, perhaps you'll ponder for a moment why so many of us get a kick out of movies in which kids are gruesomely hacked to death yet so few of us will bother to look at the carnage when it's real kids in a real war."

Almost anyone who understands the differences between reality and what's offered up as its representation in the name of entertainment understands why. The more interesting question is where the hell Goldstein gets off, really; what on earth has he ever, ever done to permit him that moment of breathtaking self-righteous shittiness? That's not a rhetorical question, by the way. If it has an answer, someone please clue me in. As for Wells, Poland and Wolcott, who don't come close to scaling Goldstein's heights here, I wonder just what it is about Roth's film, and themselves, that has suddenly turned them into moral arbiters and would-be Werthems. Which is just my way of saying, "Paging Robert Warshow!"

Comments

[Peter Debruge]

A co-worker just asked me whether she should take her parents to see Hostel: Part II -- trust me, it'd be the last time that family ever went to the movies together. But that doesn't mean there's not an audience for Eli Roth's brand of "torture porn" or, for that matter, that it's not possible to craft an intelligent movie in such an outwardly despicable format.

I tend to be sort of a grandma about movies like this (when I reviewed Hard Candy for the Miami Herald last year, the copy editor asked whether I had a teenage daughter "or something"), but I'm not ashamed to admit that I genuinely LIKED Hostel II.

Yes, the Heather Matarazzo scene is outrageous. Pretty much everything in this movie is. But that's the game Roth and his cohorts (Rob Zombie, Alexandre Aja, etc.) are playing with one another here, and Roth does a very subversive thing by asking the audience to identify with the killers this time around (which they already do to a certain extent just by watching).

The movie exists simply because audiences have an appetite for this kind of violence, but Roth has taken the premise and done something very interesting with it. David Poland has every right to object to the very existence of such movies, but I think he's overlooked the very element that makes Hostel II so transgressive (and it's not the violence, my pretties).

[Jenni]

What I find most offensive are the people who bring their children to see horror movies. Why don't more people froth at the mouth that some parents would rather be selfish and go see scary, violent movies with their children rather than waiting to see it on DVD by themselves after the kiddies have gone to bed? The under-18 crowd have always found a way to get into movies they "shouldn't" see (I know I have!) but the parents don't have to be quite as complicit as they are, especially for very small children.

Some friends of mine went to see Pan's Labyrinth in the theater, and a woman sat behind them with her small child... and began reading the subtitles aloud. When they told her that the whole damn thing was subtitled and that it was scary and violent and definitely not for kids, she was shocked. WTF?

[Aaron Aradillas]

Were these same critics as outraged by such movies as Audition, Ichi the Killer, or Three...Extremes? Could it be that those films' "foreign language cache" permitted critics to be more accepting of their more transgressive elements? Could critics be that condescending? Say it ain't so.

One more thing. Isn't the whole "bathing-in-the-blood-of-virgins" sequence a staple of certain horror movies?

[Peter Debruge]

Perhaps I haven't seen enough horror movies, but I think said bathing is a bit different when the bather dangles the victim upside down, slits her open and does the bathing fresh. It's certainly the most extreme scene I've ever witnessed in an American horror movie -- Miike operates in another category altogether (and with the exception of Audition, I have yet to find a sliver of social commentary in his gonzo gorefests).

[Filmbrain]

Aaron --

It's not a question of the film's nation of origin. Many of Miike's films are far more violent than Hostel: Part II, but they lack that sense of smug self-satisfaction that you find in Roth. Roth likes to believe he's a badass -- just look at the scene with the kids. You can almost hear Roth over your shoulder saying "Did ya see that...did you see what I just did!"

The man doesn't have a subversive or transgressive bone in his body. Peter Debruge says, "but Roth has taken the premise and done something very interesting with it." And what might that be?

The Matarazzo scene is the first time in ages that I've truly felt bad for an actress. Not only exploitative, it's mean spirited and cruel. Though I'm loathe to admit it, Poland is right about that scene.

[Mike]

I don't care for snuff films, but I guess I'm old-fashioned.

[G. Kenny]

Just to clarify—I don't have any problem with people objecting to "Hostel Part II" on either aesthetic OR moral grounds. Or both. What strikes me as goofy is the hyperventilation going on in some quarters; the prattle about "humanity" and other varieties of puerile grandstanding that does nothing to illuminate either what "Hostel Part II" is or why it and other films of its irk are so popular. To do nothing but register your indignation is just a lot of "look at me, I care!" narcissism; nothing more than a perfect inversion of Roth's "check me out, I'm outraging the fuddy-duddies" self-love.

[addison dewitt]

This is off topic, and forgive me for that. But for a week or so now, I've been utterly transfixed, not to say charmed, by my regular encounters with the ad rail at the top of the page that touts Twelve O'Clock High, The Sand Pebbles and Von Ryan's Express as "World War II Classics."

Not to be pedantic, but The Sand Pebbles is set in China in, uh, 1926. As the song says, "Don't know much about history. . ."

[G. Kenny]

Well, as war is the father of all things, perhaps what's meant here is that the place and time of "The Sand Pebbles" bears some patrimony for the subsequent conflict and can therefore be legitimately slotted as a WW II movie. But I don't think that was the intention.

[Peter Debruge]

Interesting review, Mr. Hillis, and I must concede that I'm no more pleased with Eli Roth, the person (or "the personality," I should say, for I hope the impression the man projects in his interviews and devil-dick photo shoots, etc., is a put-on to build the man's reputation), than you are.

That said, I'm not sure the fact that you're clever enough to recognize the many tricks and devices he uses in "Hostel: Part II" is reason to dismiss them. Perhaps he's not the most sophisticated provocateur in the business, but I far prefer the politics of "Hostel: Part II" to the eye-rolling Bush administration criticisms we get in "28 Weeks Later" -- talk about shallow commentary (what IS interesting about that film is the fact that it's the kids, the first ones admitted back into the bad-idea London project, that bring the whole system crashing down).

But I digress... So, sure, you're smarter than Mr. Roth? And he's a smug prick with a bad habit of congratulating himself early for the "genius" of his films? So what? The movie stands, and, in my book, it works -- expertly, I might add. It's not scary, you say? Well, precious few horror movies are, especially to the jaded likes of you and me. But there's something to be said for the fact that he maintains our interest during the dull parts (you know, the stretches you're tempted to fast-forward through during all those gory giallos).

What troubles me is that the criticisms voiced in your review are precisely the ones that I entered the movie with: I wasn't much impressed with "Cabin Fever" (with the exception of the bizarre touch with that loony child outside the general store -- Roth's got a gift for crafting these strange and memorable personalities in precious little screen time), and the first "Hostel" was neither smart enough (same problem as "28 Weeks Later" -- the "obnoxious Americans hated abroad" target was just too obvious) nor gory enough (there, I said it -- he even under-delivered on the squirm factor first time around, and that cheapie dangling-eye effect was just embarrassing). But I belong to the "call 'em like I see 'em" school.

I may have been ready to rail against "Hostel: Part II," to pick it apart as the latest offense of an immature frat boy who's been drinking his own Kool-Aid and all that. But I guess I wasn't ready to be impressed -- and when that happened, I was more than willing to report as much.

I don't think it's trying to be all that scary (at least not in the sense of having things pop out of the dark or loud screeches unsettle us on the soundtrack, and how sophisticated would THAT have been, anyway?). But I do think Roth has done something very interesting with it: He's asked us to identify with the villains, and in doing so, to see something of ourselves in them. And he does it in a way that can be appreciated on a surface level, as well as a more academic one (as much as I love Haneke, his films can't be enjoyed as strict narratives, but only on the "what is he trying to say?" level).

Why does Quentin Tarantino, Roth's cohort in crime (who has a strong auteurial stamp on these movies, according to the commentary featured on the first one), get a pass with something as lame as "Death Proof" (I mean, we're all smart enough to know what QT's "up to" there, right?) while Roth deserves to be outed as the "cheap poseur (he) is"?

Is it "how little he knows about women"? Cuz, correct me if I'm wrong, but Tarantino reveals he knows even less about the fairer sex in "Grindhouse" (apart from the fact that he thinks it's sexy when they need to pee and likes looking at their toes, perhaps). And I think Roth knows enough about women to have learned what they want from his brand horror movie (which is something very different from actually writing realistic females).

I think the world of you, Aaron, but your review smacks of the worst hipsterism. If it's "cool" to embrace Roth in the face of outcries by people like David Poland, then I guess it's even "cooler" to call the guy on his bluff. Which is fine ... but then, you've gotta extend the same approach to every other "poseur" in showbiz. Sorry, QT, that means you.

[Controlled Burning]

I'm not a huge fan of Roth's work after Cabin Fever, which I think had enough gross fun and humor going for it that you overlooked the really unsettling parts. But look at everyone on these boards...the man certainly has everyone in a lather over his film, which is exactly how he wants it, I would wager. If everyone ignored loathsome stories and cruelty-for-the-sake-of-it in films, I doubt they'd keep making money. So, keep talking, folks, you're just driving the curious out to a matinee to see what it's all about.

[Lori]

I love horror films. I love Fulci, Bava, and the Maestro, Argento...Romero and Peter Jackson are like dads, Craven is like an uncle (disowned once for Cursed, but easily forgiven), Carpenter's like the funny uncle, and Miike is the one family member you leave alone because he's freaky, but you still love him. I'm leaving out a lot of family members, but you get the point.

Eli Roth is the annoying cousin who doesn't get that you don't want to talk to him or be around him and keeps pestering you, thinking that he's the salve for a floundering genre.

He's a hack who has brought back everything that was terrible about 80s horror. His writing is hackneyed and immature, his direction is hamhanded, and he doesn't seem to truly understand the history of the genre he's exploiting. He just likes the blood, but not the dynamics behind what makes the films that work really work.

Tarantino, God love him, has terrible taste in movies. No, seriously, a good portion of the films he talks about endlessly are really bad. But the movies he makes are phenomenal, even Death Proof, which was slow in the beginning, was awesome. Why is that? Because he understands the movies that he loves. He understands what makes them work and what doesn't...he knows the history of his selected genres as if his brain were really an encyclopedia.