Hostel is a 2005 horror/thriller movie about three backpackers who head to a Slovak city that promises to meet their hedonistic expectations, with no idea of the hell that awaits them.
Looking for a European adventure? Why not pay a visit to the quaint town of Slovakia that not only promises tourists friendly locals … but perhaps a visit to its torture museum. Under the ladder’s idyllic guise is a whole different tourist attraction run by the Elite Hunting Club. For those who can afford their services the Elite Hunting Club can satisfy the darkest of your desires, but of course if you’re a little low on funds they still offer a way for you to take part, though your willingness might not be so forthcoming when you to discover what’s the deal.
Shot on location in the Czech Republic city of Cesky Krumlov, it’s really the perfect setting for the mysterious hostel to be found, which is actually a former monastery. The museum of torture wasn’t a creation of director Eli Roth but rather something that surprisingly was already in the town and an actual attraction you can visit if such things appeal to you.
Much like the cabin in Cabin In The Woods, here we also get two locations with a symbiotic link, with the titular hostel fulfilling the demand for victims required by the clients of the Elite Hunting Club and then the facility where the real business of the club is handled. Inspiration for this setup supposedly came from a real site sent to Roth by Ain’t It Cool founder / hobbit Harry Knowles following a conversation between the pair about a website which enabled you to shoot animals over the internet. The Texas-based owner claimed that he created the site as a way for disabled hunters to participate in the sport. This conversation would lead Roth to another website where for $10,000 you could go to Thailand and shoot a stranger for sport. The potential victim agreeing to take part as Roth explained to Dread Central:
“The site claimed that the person you were killing had signed up for it and that part of the money would go to their family because they were so broke and were gonna die anyway,”
Of course the same can’t be said for the victims who find themselves at the facility, especially those drawn in by the promises of easy hook ups and beautiful women. The club often played off the ignorance of its potential victims, as seen by our trio of frat boys in the first film not knowing the difference between Slovakia and Slovenia. They ditch their travel plans in favour of the hostel whose many beautiful “sex starved” ladies are the result of there being no men due to war. This lure however is shown as being easily adapted to bring in the kind of victims that will appeal to the clubs members, with the trio of girls lured to the hostel in Part 2 brought to the village with the prospect of local culture combined with the shark-like charms of Axelle (Vera Jordanova). While sex might not be the same obvious bait as the first film, it is unquestionably still there though if not already highlighted by the flirtatious nature of Axelle it is by the time the first of this trio falls victim; the socially awkward Lorna (Heather Matarazzo) buying into the allure of the romantic encounter with a mysterious foreign stranger only for it land her first on the chopping block.
Such ignorance about the world and the club’s ability to exploit them is really were the strength of the club lies, especially when less than 15% of Americans actually have a passport. The Hostel plays strongly into the fear of being kidnapped and killed in foreign lands. Roth here further establishes this ignorance by having Americans as the ones who command the highest bids from the clubs members.
Once the trap has been sprung on our potential victims, the inner workings are slowly revealed to the audience, in particular just how much of a well-oiled machine it is, smack in the middle of a town who we can only assume from the lack of any intervention from the authorities are all involved. Certainly this would explain why there are a pack of feral kids wandering the streets with their own murderous tendencies … outside of the own bubblegum racket they are running.
So, through one of the two routes you find yourself on in the facility – hopefully it’s as a client and not a victim – especially when Elite Hunting pride themselves on the efficiency of their operation. It was especially interesting to see the site adapting to deal with what is assumed to be their first escaped victim in Paxton (Jay Hernandez), who ultimately ended up succumbing to the club as well with his head now part of Sasha’s collection. To Roth’s credit though, he shows an evolution with this location with electronic locks being added by the time we revisit the facility in the sequel.
Shot at a functioning mental hospital in Prague, which was built in 1910, the wing used for filming had been closed for 50 years and prior to production had housed the craziest patients whose aura still seemed to hang in the air, leading Roth to hire a string quartet to lighten the mood while they were shooting. That’s gloomy.
It’s also in the sequel where we get more of an idea of how membership to the club works as its members must show their dedication to the club and maintain its secrecy by having the Elite Hunting bloodhound logo tattooed on them. While this might not be the best way to avoid incriminating yourself of involvement in a secretive and extremely deviant activity, for some of the members – such as the American that Paxton meets in the changing room – it’s a mark of their exclusivity akin to a secret handshake. It’s also through this tattoo that your commitment is secured by choosing the victim, making it almost like a gang initiation.
It’s unclear if we should view the members of the club as all being psychopaths even if they are engaging in a wide range of deviant behaviour within the walls of the facility from torture, bloodbathing through to cannibalism. Are these desires being fulfilled as a result of some dark desire or is it the fact that the clubs exclusivity to do what they want because of their ability to afford their services that holds more of an appeal? It’s a question never really answered over the course of the series much less why it attracts so many directors of violent cinema including both Takashi Miike and Ruggero Deodato – the later fittingly as the director of Cannibal Holocaust seen here as a cannibal. Considering the amount of money being spent by the members it’s also surprisingly that they are willing to tolerate such grim conditions that their sessions take place within.
Sure the facility might be located within a disused factory, but while this is certainly a suitable front it makes little sense that the rooms being used by the club members are so cold and grimy when you would expect something a lot more clinical or perhaps luxurious as in the case of the bloodbathing scene, especially considering the modern-day Elizabeth Báthory who has chosen to engage in this act. Instead, the rooms, much like the rest of the facility, are all about functionality. The facility even has its own butcher on site to help with the clean up and who unsurprisingly is a big hulking brute. The fact that Roth has worked in a way to dispose of the remains only makes the location feel all the more complete. The big question though is why none of the relatives or friends of the victims ever come looking for them.
The hostel is a fascinating creation that somehow didn’t lose its mystique over the two films it was featured in (the third film moved the club’s activities to Las Vegas, also changing up the format in which they operate to suit the setting as gathered members gambled on the fate of the victims). As a results it’s hard to say if the location could have stood up to a third visit, though a prequel of how the club was formed still remains a tantalising prospect that has yet to be realised. For now, the two visits we do get still make it one of the most interesting locations to turn up in the tiresome Torture Porn genre.