Hostel

This movie is not for the faint of heart and unfortunately despite my love of horror movies I fall under that category. Alongside the Saw franchise Hostel has been ingrained in my brain as the posterboy of the genre dubbed as “Torture Porn”. And while the Saw series is by no means perfect it has several good installments and while later on the franchise began prioritizing gore and the ever convoluting lore and plot reveals. And I think that notion affected how i’d view this movie, and when nudity and homophobia were being thrown at the screen I thought I was going to be sitting through the goriest substanceless sludge imaginable. And look I know i’m not exactly looking at some deep subtext here but once I saw the parallels the movie was drawing between sex tourism and exploitation to the events of the story I was actually quite impressed. The movie covers a lot of ground pertaining to the subject most core to the story being just how distant people are from the way they engage with sex especially when it comes to dehumanizing and silencing those without the money or power to fight back. I’ll admit there were about 3 points during this movie’s runtime where I had to take a break because the violence was just too much, but despite that i’d always return because I genuinely believe that you could not tell this story without it. Despite being about torture this movie does not relish in it as its primary draw. And while horror quite inherently uses violence as a draw this is subject matter where not only would it come off as gross but insensitive to do. I like that this is movie slowly becomes more about Paxton’s arch. While the connection between this torture industry and sexual exploitation is never directly linked I feel like it’s fair to say the trials he goes through should instill that inherent connection as we’re thrown in that detail with a moment of failure to act early in his life. This movie is actually rather good at setting up crucial plot elements in a very natural way that feel very rewarding to see playout. While its sheer violence might steer me away from a future rewatch I cannot deny that despite my preconceived notions of this movie it takes such a hard concept to sell to someone not enticed by promises of extreme gore and gives it enough substance to actually make sitting through it bearable. While I have a feeling i’ll feel guilty when seeing the ratings others have left for this movie I have to go with my heart here because unfortunately I don’t have the time to let my thoughts on this one linger.