Internationally renowned filmmaker Quentin Tarantino presents Eli Roth’s Hostel, the follow-up to the writer-director’s hit debut, 2002’s Cabin Fever. More grisly than Roth’s feature bow, Hostel is a mixture of many of the most terrifying things about human nature and the world at large.
Culled from many impossible-but-true stories of human trafficking, international organized crime, and sex tourism. Relentlessly graphic and deeply disturbing, the film is sure to shock even the most hard core genre fans. Hostel tells the story of two adventurous American college buddies Paxton and Josh who backpack through Europe eager to make quintessentially hazy travel memories with new friend Oli, an Icelander they’ve met along the way.
Paxton and Josh are eventually lured by a fellow traveler to what’s described as a nirvana for American backpackers – a particular hostel in an out-of-the-way Slovakian town stocked with Eastern European women as desperate as they are gorgeous. The two friends arrive and soon easily pair off with exotic beauties Natalya and Svetlana. In fact, too easily…
Initially distracted by the good time they’re having, the two Americans quickly find themselves trapped in an increasingly sinister situation that they will discover is as wide and as deep as the darkest, sickest recess of human nature itself – if they survive.
Presented by genre master Quentin Tarantino and taking a much more macabre tone than did Eli Roth’s feature debut Cabin Fever, Hostel is an amalgamation of many of terrifying things about human nature and the world at large, culled from lots of pulpy-but-true stories of international organized crime, human trafficking, and sex tourism.
Relentlessly graphic and disturbing, the film is rife with explicit sex and brutal violence that may delight hard core genre fans, and prove difficult to stomach for general audiences. Three backpackers head to a Slovakian city that promises to meet their hedonistic expectations, with no idea of the hell that awaits them.
Hostel is a 2005 American horror film written and directed by Eli Roth. It stars Jay Hernandez and was produced by Mike Fleiss, Eli Roth, and Chris Briggs; Boaz Yakin, Scott Spiegel, and Quentin Tarantino are executive producers. It is the first installment of the Hostel trilogy, followed by Hostel: Part II (2007) and Hostel: Part III (2011). The film tells the story of two college students traveling across Europe, who find themselves preyed upon by a mysterious group that tortures and kills kidnapped victims.
Hostel opened theatrically on January 6, 2006, in the United States and earned $19.6 million in its first weekend, ranking number one in the box office. By the end of its run, six weeks later, the film grossed $47.3 million in the US box office and $33.3 million internationally for a worldwide total of $80.6 million.
The Making of “Hostel”
Writer / director Eli Roth is always looking for ways to scare people; yet unlike most horror auteurs, Roth knows that real life stories, and their revelations about the darker corners of human nature, are often much more frightening than monsters and boogeymen. With his debut feature, Cabin Fever, he turned newspaper headlines about a fatal flesh-eating bacteria into a horrific bloodbath among a group of young vacationers. Now, with Lions Gate Films’ Hostel, Roth once again draws inspiration from real events, this time with even more disturbing results.
Roth discovered the creative seed for Hostel during a late-night conversation with his friend Harry Knowles, the web-master of Aintitcoolnews.com. “We were talking about the sickest thing you could possibly find on the internet,” Roth recalls. “Something that went beyond the usual bestiality, skateboarding accidents or even those two Japanese girls vomiting into each other’s mouths in a bathtub.”
Knowles claimed he had stumbled across something so frightening he was hesitant to confess its discovery to Roth, which only made the director more curious. Knowles eventually forwarded Roth the link to a website; and what Roth discovered disturbed him more deeply than he could have imagined: somewhere in Thailand, a business was profiting on the visceral thrill of murder. For a fee of $10,000, anyone so willing could be escorted to a room, handed a loaded gun and offered another human being to kill.
“The concept instantly made me nauseous,” remembers Roth. “But it also felt real. People are sick. There are no limits to what they will do to another person for their own pleasure, and that’s the most horrifying thing of all. It’s what always stuck with me.”
The site claimed that in Thailand the practice was perfectly legal, as the victims were participating of their own free will. They were desolate, poverty-stricken people whose families were starving to death. By way of their self-sacrifice, they would make enough money for their loved ones to survive. “The website made it sound as if the prospective killers were benefactors, like they were doing a service for the victims by way of this bizarre life insurance scheme,” says Roth.
Roth was so jarred by this discovery that he immediately began work on a documentary on the subject; but he soon began to wonder about the dangers of uncovering the truth. “If I actually found anyone connected to an organization that profited from murder, why would they think twice about taking me out?” he reasons. Unsure of how to proceed safely, Roth set the idea aside.
Continue Reading and View the Theatrical Trailer
Hostel (2006)
Directed by: Eli Roth
Starring: Jay Hernandez, Jennifer Lim, Derek Richardson, Barbara Nedeljakova, Jana Kaderabkova, Eythor Gudjonsson, Keiko Seiko, Jana Havlickova, Rick Hoffman, Lubomír Bukový
Screenplay by: Eli Roth
Production Design by: Franco-Giacomo Carbone
Cinematography by: Milan Chadima
Film Editing by: George Folsey Jr.
Costume Design by: Franco-Giacomo Carbone
Set Decoration by: Karel Vanásek
Art Direction by: David Baxa
Music by: Nathan Barr
MPAA Rating: R for brutal scenes of torture and violence, strong sexual content, language, drug use.
Studio: Lionsgate Films
Release Date: January 12, 2006
Views: 236
