The Horror Blog’s Steven Wintle, bless him, was very patient with me during the months I’d bust Hostel‘s chops without actually having seen it. Now that I have, and changed my tune accordingly, he writes regarding my earlier reticence:
I can completely understand people not wanting to see it because of the gore, or even the context of the gore. I find many slasher and giallo films to be far worse in depicting brutality and demeaning acts against human beings, but the idea of someone being tied down and having things happen to them as opposed to, I don’t know, running through the woods and being impaled on a tree by a machete really freaks some people out. And that’s fine. I don’t think anyone should expose themselves to something they can’t handle (I know I do). I just couldn’t get over the idea that most people criticizing Hostel hadn’t seen it! I mean, House of Wax was probably more cringe-worthy in its violence then Hostel, for me at least. Hostel is a long movie with little flashes of violence, not a non-stop parade of carnage. And it plays out like a straight-up suspense story, as if Hitchcock decided to throw in some splatter. That whole final segment, where Paxton is trying to escape with very little dialogue and that fantastic score, had me at the edge of my seat, and not because I wanted to see someone’s head smashed in.
As for Roth’s comments on the movie, I understand where you’re coming from. I find that happens quite often, in that the creator either accidentally made something that was better then him, or, more likely, he or she just isn’t a very good orator. I lean more towards the second cause mainly because I’m a very visual person, and I find communicating my thoughts through words to be extremely difficult. If Roth, or Tarantino, or most of those guys could shoot a small film whenever they wanted to make a statement to the press they’d probably come off a whole lot better.
His point about the context of the gore in a torture film is a really good one. Without the element of a chase or an ambush or the other usual settings for violence in a horror movie, the brutality is kind of in its purest form, and it’s off-putting in a way that even really over-the-top violence in other contexts just isn’t.
The final sequence to which Steven refers reminded me a lot of similar sequences from Children of Men. Now THERE’S a double feature.
Finally, which is it: Did Roth make a movie that was better than him, or is he just kind of an inarticulate doofus when it comes to talking about his work? I’m really not sure.