January 22, 2007

ICK Factor!

So, I just watched Eli Roth's silly excuse for a movie that is Hostel. I know there are fans, but, honestly? This was stupid. It was lazy and lame and frustrating (omg he just had to go back and get that other girl, how brave) and homophobic and sick and... well, you get the picture. The last, maybe, 20 minutes were the best parts because it seemed to actually be doing something other than remaining stagnant and standing around throwing blood at me. And speaking of blood - sure, there was lots of it, but really, Hostel wasn't even that gory. I found myself wincing maybe twice. And that one character who chainsawed his own leg off? What a dumbass.

And at under 90 minutes it was so incredibly long and drawn out. Like, the first half I kept yelling for it to hurry up and do something other than show two assholes getting drunk, high and laid. And then the second half it was just the same but with blood instead of booze, guns instead of pot and screaming instead of sex. Whoopdeedoo!

And it would appear that the sequel, Hostel II, will ditch the male leads and have a lead trio of women. WOW. Now that, Mr Roth, is progress. D+

By the way, to save you having to look at a picture from the movie, I chose to include a picture of Hostel co-star and major cutie Derek Richardson as he appears in the much less R-rated television series Men in Trees.

3 comments:

Paxton Hernandez said...

Too bad you didn't enjoy the magnificent Hostel. It was no. 2 in my Top Ten for 2006. I guess it's not really your cup of tea. =(

I found the film anything but boring. It's brilliant.

Jason Adams said...

It's around a B- for me, Glenn. I'm less a fan of the movie itself than what Roth's trying to do with his movies. I do agree this movie's a mess and he's not there yet, but I think Roth's got more on his mind than say the directors of the Saw series do. He's just not getting it right just yet.

And I agree that the movie turns completely homophobic by the end, but I do think Roth was trying to be the opposite but he let it get out of his hands. He kinda lost what he was doing. But there's a lot interesting going on with it, I think. I'm excited to see if he can pull it together for Part II.

Glenn Dunks said...

I probably liked it more than Saw II only because the end was legitimately interesting (not knowing if Jay Hernandez would die or not) whereas Saw II was about as predictable as those things get.

Still... it just didn't ever get going enough and while I can see people's points when they say it's some allagory for the war in Iraq or whatever, I don't actually think Roth is that forward-thinking for it to be intentional. I think he just made all his characters assholes and expected me to care when they started getting butchered.