Hostel 2 and the state of Horror Films in General

[Sickboy]

Here is a leaked clip from Hostel 2. I had to watch it just to confirm what I already knew. Its crap. Not normal crap like some lame straight to video gore fest..but crap that actually believes it is breaking new ground and achieving something great.

I'd encourage people to avoid this movie when it opens if only to prevent more Eli Roths from gaining power in hollywood.

Here is the clip if your interested: http://www.wwtdd.com/post.phtml?pk=2366 it is EXTEMELY GRPAHIC AND NSFW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! RATED R(for violence,nudity,cheesynesss,and crappy directing).

MTV Interview with His Royal Doucheness Eli Roth

Q: You're often lumped in with other young horror directors like James Wan (Saw) and Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes). Do you enjoy being associated with that group?
Roth: We've been referred to as the Splat Pack, which I think is a cool title. Hopefully I'm not the Judd Nelson of the Splat Pack. Preferably I'll be the Rob Lowe. We're all just trying to bring back really bloody, violent, disgusting, sick horror movies.

Q: It's a noble pursuit.
Roth: Yeah! I feel like in the '90s, horror just lost its way and everything became so safe and watered-down. When I go see an R-rated horror movie, I want lots of violence. I want nudity. I want sex and violence mixed together. What's wrong with that? Am I the only one? I don't think so.

Q: What kind of trajectory would you like to see horror take in the future?
Roth: We're in a really violent wave and I hope it never ends. Hopefully we'll get to a point where there are absolutely no restrictions on any kind of violence in movies. I'd love to see us get to a point where you can go to theaters and see movies unrated and that people know its not real violence. It's all pretend. It's all fake. It's just acting. It's just magic tricks. Hopefully we'll get to a point where people realize movies don't cause violence. It just reflects the violence going on in the culture. I'd love to see us get to a point where you can make a movie and not worry about the limits of the violence. Then I think they'd get so violent that people would get bored of it.

Q: What do you say to critics who call your work "torture porn"?
Roth: It's so funny how critics will always quickly reduce horror almost to a subgenre of pornography. I do feel like terms like "torture porn" are offensive. When I see a critic refer to Hostel as torture porn it feels like in the 1950s parents going, "I don't want you to listen to that rock and roll. It's dangerous!" It makes me laugh. It makes me feel like they're out of touch.

Q: Do you feel a sense of fraternity with the rest of the so-called Splat Pack?
Roth: We don't go out like the Bloodhound Gang, or go back to the clubhouse and watch movies — although we kind of do in a weird way. We were all kind of the outcasts, so there's a real bond between everyone. None of us are competing for the same projects. Everyone is doing their own thing. And when a movie is successful, it helps all of us. When House Of A 1,000 Corpses was successful, it helped Cabin Fever. When Cabin Fever was successful, it helped Saw.

Q: What was appealing about going right back into another Hostel film for you?
Roth: I watched ["Hostel"] with audiences all around the world and everybody loves the kids and the girls getting run over and the eyeball getting cut out, but more people told me that they were freaked out by the American businessman in the locker room with the gun going like, "What's it like to kill someone?" And they'd say, "I want to see a movie about that guy." So with Hostel: Part II, I said, "Let's really go deep into the minds of those businessmen. Let's watch the process from start to finish."

Q: What scenes are audiences going to be talking about as they leave Hostel: Part II?
Roth: You've got to have those signature scenes. Let's just say there's one scene that's going to make every girl in the audience cringe and scream, and there's one scene that's definitely going to make every guy in the audience cringe and scream.

Q: Do you have a third Hostel in mind?
Roth: It's not something I'd do, but never say never. I did parts one and two without a break, so my head has been in that torture factory every day for literally two years now. I need to switch it up. I need a little sherbet in between to just cleanse the palette.

Q: Tell us about your fake trailer in Grindhouse. Could you imagine the fake film Thanksgiving spawning a full-length movie?
Roth: Oh, absolutely. The trailer was so much fun. It's all gore and nudity. It's all money shots, bodies being chopped up and people being stabbed and cheerleaders stripping on trampolines. It's three minutes of pure happiness. The feature will never live up to the trailer unless we just do 90 minutes of that. For Grindhouse 2, I think there's a very strong chance of shooting it. Quentin and Robert and the Weinstein Company love the trailer so much they're already asking me, "Where's the script for Thanksgiving?"

Q: You have yet to work with a truly large budget. Hostel: Part II is only a $20 million movie, right?
Roth: I wish. If you combined all three of the budgets of my movies it wouldn't even equal the salary of one castmember on "Ocean's Thirteen."

Q: Are you itching to do something on a larger scale?
Roth: It's interesting, because I've had opportunities to do franchise movies. Once your movie opens at #1, you're offered everything. There were movies like "Halo," and they're remaking "The Hulk" again, and "Die Hard 4," and I just thought I'd rather write and direct and do my own thing. I don't need to jump to a $100 million movie. There were some books I was interested in. I was like, "I'd love to do 'The Phantom Tollbooth' or 'In the Heart of the Sea.' " But the truth is, right now I love writing and directing my own stories. I really wanted to adapt the "Tripods" trilogy, but it went to another director.

Q: How do you feel about your competition this summer at the box office?
Roth: It's going to be the Splat Pack vs. the Rat Pack. They were like, "We're going to open [Hostel: Part II] in June." I'm like, "What else is opening then?" They're like, " Ocean's Thirteen. " I'm like, "Well, that's awesome, because it will be fun to go up against George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon." But you know what? I still want my money back from Ocean's Twelve. The biggest heist they pulled in Ocean's Twelve was taking the public's money. I want my money back before I see Ocean's Thirteen.

Q: No one will say that about Hostel: Part II though, right?
Roth: No. I think people will say, "I want my lunch back," after Hostel: Part II."

[Blarg]

Bizarre that someone completely gleeful about reveling in grotesque violence should object to people noticing. Torture porn seems perfectly fitting to me. I'll never see one of these flicks and that's fine with me. This kid of thing traditionally used to be thought of as what horror directors do when they have NO imagination and are going for the cheap thrill, not what someone does who is inventive or daring. Strange how what used to be thought of as dull and lazy hack work could get construed as exciting and daring.

[bernie]

[ QUOTE ]
This kind of thing traditionally used to be thought of as what horror directors do when they have NO imagination and are going for the cheap thrill, not what someone does who is inventive or daring.

[/ QUOTE ]

I tend to agree.

I like it much better when they leave it to the mind. Some of the shock value stuff just doesn't really add anything.

But that said, I didn't mind Saw or Hostel. But I also dug the stories themselves.

b

[Autocratic]

Who is adapting the Tripods trilogy? I adored those books when I was a kid.

[Peter666]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
This kind of thing traditionally used to be thought of as what horror directors do when they have NO imagination and are going for the cheap thrill, not what someone does who is inventive or daring.

[/ QUOTE ]

I tend to agree.

I like it much better when they leave it to the mind. Some of the shock value stuff just doesn't really add anything.

But that said, I didn't mind Saw or Hostel. But I also dug the stories themselves.

b

[/ QUOTE ]

The original Hostel was not nearly as violent and deranged as the trailer made it out to be. I thought it would be much darker.

Anyway, the shock of any film is completely dependant on one's empathy or sympathy for a character. You don't need a lot of gore to create horror if you have good characters.

[Kimbell175113]

Here's my problem: most of the people who criticize Hostel haven't seen it, and most of the people who like it do so for the wrong reasons.

I like Hostel, and I like Eli Roth, but I rarely say that because I know the associations people have.

First of all, there's no way that Hostel was "fill[ed] with gore and violence." One of the reasons I liked it was that it harkened back to an older, slower style of filmmaking, where the whole point is that there are only two or three really insane scenes, and the rest of the film is supposed to either misdirect or increase the tension or whatever.

Cabin Fever (depending on whom you ask) and his trailer in Grindhouse showed that Roth is a thoughtful director with some knowledge of the history and structure of horror, not just the stories but the meta stuff, too. To me, it was obvious that Hostel was on a slightly higher level than Saw or the generic horror that's churned out monthly nowadays, but I guess it wasn't like that for everyone. I thought there were some very well done thematic elements going on in the first Hostel (ugh, I can never sound authoritative when I write critically like this) with regards to the attitudes of the Americans toward Europe, the fact that he shows us how assholish these guys are then gets us to sympathize with them anyway (and are we right to do so?). The (imo) well-executed tone changes and the fact that he DIDN'T stop to overexplain the specifics of the torture business.

I realize that many smart people hate this movie, and I don't even think that they're wrong to do so or that I can change their minds, but I do truly believe that Hostel is way way better than the standard horror, and that it's possible to find things in there that you can't in Saw or a Japanese remake.

I'd like to hear private joker's opinion on this one, because I know he knows what he's talking about but I have no clue whether he'd like this movie or loathe it.

Adding more: this wasn't my favorite horror film of '06, it had some big problems (the writing, mostly), and is certainly no classic or anything, but the "torture porn" label is totally unfair as a way of dismissing films, is all I'm sayin'.

[Moneyline]

[ QUOTE ]
I thought there were some very well done thematic elements going on in the first Hostel

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree. SPOILER IN RED** <font color="red">The whole theme of the Americans taking advantage of poor European women in terms of sex in the first half of the film is a thoughtful counterpoint to poor Europeans taking advantage of Americans in the latter part of the film.</font> Just because HOSTEL was an exploitation film does not make it mindless.

[Dominic]

[ QUOTE ]
Here's my problem: most of the people who criticize Hostel haven't seen it, and most of the people who like it do so for the wrong reasons.

I like Hostel, and I like Eli Roth, but I rarely say that because I know the associations people have.

First of all, there's no way that Hostel was "fill[ed] with gore and violence." One of the reasons I liked it was that it harkened back to an older, slower style of filmmaking, where the whole point is that there are only two or three really insane scenes, and the rest of the film is supposed to either misdirect or increase the tension or whatever.

Cabin Fever (depending on whom you ask) and his trailer in Grindhouse showed that Roth is a thoughtful director with some knowledge of the history and structure of horror, not just the stories but the meta stuff, too. To me, it was obvious that Hostel was on a slightly higher level than Saw or the generic horror that's churned out monthly nowadays, but I guess it wasn't like that for everyone. I thought there were some very well done thematic elements going on in the first Hostel (ugh, I can never sound authoritative when I write critically like this) with regards to the attitudes of the Americans toward Europe, the fact that he shows us how assholish these guys are then gets us to sympathize with them anyway (and are we right to do so?). The (imo) well-executed tone changes and the fact that he DIDN'T stop to overexplain the specifics of the torture business.

I realize that many smart people hate this movie, and I don't even think that they're wrong to do so or that I can change their minds, but I do truly believe that Hostel is way way better than the standard horror, and that it's possible to find things in there that you can't in Saw or a Japanese remake.

I'd like to hear private joker's opinion on this one, because I know he knows what he's talking about but I have no clue whether he'd like this movie or loathe it.

Adding more: this wasn't my favorite horror film of '06, it had some big problems (the writing, mostly), and is certainly no classic or anything, but the "torture porn" label is totally unfair as a way of dismissing films, is all I'm sayin'.

[/ QUOTE ]

Kimbell, I respect your thoughtful opinion on Eli Roth, and his movies, even if I disagree completely. Here's my take on Hostel:

Hostel

[private joker]

[ QUOTE ]


I'd like to hear private joker's opinion on this one, because I know he knows what he's talking about but I have no clue whether he'd like this movie or loathe it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry to bump this thread, but I found this post after doing a search for my name.

Kimbell, I hate to tell you, but I think Hostel sucks. I do think Roth has some talent -- to me, Cabin Fever was a mediocre success with a lot of flaws but some likable elements -- but he just doesn't know how to apply it without making so much other noise.

He's too self-conscious to be scary, too cynical to care about his characters, and too arrogant to question the nature of his own images.

Hostel in particular is pretty dumb as both a horror tale and as underlying political metaphor, and the gore is neither as creative nor as horrific as many great gore-fests from Japan, Italy, and the U.S. I was bored for the first hour, then I was disappointed and cheated by the end.

That doesn't mean I'm against the torture porn genre per se, because it's had its moments. In fact, I think WOLF CREEK might be the best example of its genre since TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. It's unbelievably great in every way. Roth needs to watch him some Wolf Creek to see how it's done.

I also think THE DESCENT is worth mentioning; I didn't exactly enjoy watching it, but I felt more abused, rocked, punished, and disturbed as an audience member than I've felt from any recent film. I don't even know if it's a good movie (the acting is spotty at best, the dialogue is terrible, there's a couple plot holes, etc.) but I won't forget the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach enduring the claustrophobia and menace of that film. Eli Roth is incapable of manipulating the cinematic image to that extent.

[NotFadeAway]

It's hard to believe that a movie as smart and good as Cabin Fever is made by the same guy that made a piece of junk like Hostel. It's like Eli Roth decided that filling a movie with gore and violence is a lot easier than actually coming up with a story.