A "Hostel" Insurgence

(originally published at the now-defunct www.poweredbymovies.com)

In the most recent movie weekend, described by nearly every studio as tepid in comparison to most summer releases, the big news wasn’t that Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s 13 made less than either of its predecessors--in all honesty, its $36.1 million intake wasn’t too far below the first of the trilogy ($38.1 million) or the second ($39.1 million) and is far from a disaster in this overstuffed season--or the strong legs of raunchy Judd Apatow comedy Knocked Up.Instead, it was the $8.2 million earned by Eli Roth’s gorefest Hostel Part II, less than $10 million from what part one made in the winter of 2006. The blogosphere has already pounced on writer/director Eli Roth and the entire recent surge of horror films dubbed by New York Magazine’s David Edelstein as “torture porn"--this would include such releases from the past few years as Wolf Creek, the Aja remake of The Hills Have Eyes and the blockbuster Saw trilogy--and have exclaimed that this widely denounced sub-genre has finally worn out its welcome. Like the slasher films of the 1970s and 1980s or the jokey Kevin Williamson Scream-type movies from the 1990s, it’s time for them to bite the dust.

I do not follow this line of thinking. Far from it. It is true that the horror genre, much like any niche-driven type of film ranging from action movies to musicals to westerns, follows a cyclical cycle of popularity, and it seems to a great deal of people that this could be the beginning of the end. However, one film does not equal a trend. To put things into perspective, no, Hostel Part II performed way under expectations. The film did, though, cost only $10 million. By this coming Thursday I can assure you it will have made back its production cost, and the rest of its run will cover the advertising budget (which to this writer seemed to be lacking in generally anyway). Take into account overseas distribution sales, the sure-fire DVD rental surge and cable television, and production company Lion’s Gate has a bonafide hit on their hands. There are no two ways about it. Horror films can be made on the cheap and still look absolutely passable to anyone’s eyes, and is a worthy investment for any producer.

The movie itself was watchable, lacking in tension but a vast improvement over the onslaught of horror-free PG-13 “horror” films that are released about 20 times per year. Since its plot shared a very close similarity to the first film, the freshness of the this-could-happen-in-real-life story couldn’t shock a second time. A fair amount of gore made it to the finished product, but a surprising amount happened off-screen. I would chalk up the “failure” of the film to the aforementioned crowded weekend (hell, Pirates 3 is still in second place three weeks later), poor advertising that relied too heavily on the Internet and not enough in theatres, and a word-of-mouth that just didn’t happen.

So before you let your irrational hatred of Mr. Roth figuratively execute a still-lucrative genre (the last Saw film, for your information, grossed over $80 million, and the third sequel comes out this Halloween), keep in mind that despite the flayed skin and dismemberment of these films, these forays into realistic human suffering are a valid art form that should not be compared in any sense to pornography. Mr. Roth may be an egotistical bastard (no argument here) but he is just trying to do what he does best--scare the crap out of you.