Hostel Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		0.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		5.0
Overall		2.5

Hostel Blu-ray Movie Review

Eli Roth's hit torture film hacks its way onto Blu-ray

Reviewed by Martin Liebman November 1, 2007

Hostel, director Eli Roth’s gore-fest, is a love-it-or-hate-it type of film. The film has garnered heaps of praise from some all the while being thrown onto the trash heap by others. I happen to fall into the latter category, but far be it from me to besmirch those who happen to like this film. I can certainly appreciate that Hostel is meant to be an escapist film. It’s just not my type of escapist film.

Paxton is about to make the biggest mistake of his life

Hostel is the story of two American college students, Paxton and Josh (Jay Hernandez and Derek Richardson), on vacation in Europe. Their plan: drink, get high, and meet women. They are told by Alex (Lubomir Bukovy) about a hostel near Bratislava, Slovakia where all of their wildest dreams are sure to come true. They travel to the hostel and meet several easy girls, but they begin to worry that something may be amiss when their new Icelandic friend Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson) suddenly disappears. They are told he has checked out of the hostel and receive several cryptic text messages and photos from him. More complications and worries arise when another guest of the Hostel, Yuki (Keiko Seiko) turns up missing. Finally, it is up to Paxton to discover the fates of his friends, and he is led towards his own demise at the hands of madmen who have contracted the “Elite Hunting Company” to find people for them to torture.

Hostel, it seems, is a horrific short film expanded to 90 minutes. Roth provides quite a bit of extraneous set-up to reach the payoff of witnessing the brutal torture of the students. The first two acts of the film feature razor thin characters in what could be described as European Vacation meets Porky’s with a foreboding atmosphere. The final act is sadistic, featuring gruesome brutality sure to churn the stomachs of even the most hardcore gore fans. It’s hard to like any of the characters in the film, perhaps a method employed by Roth to downplay our emotions of seeing innocent people slaughtered with no underlying motivation by their killers. Unfortunately, the audience leaves the film knowing little about the clients of Elite Hunting Company, or the company itself. What are the client’s motivations for wanting to torture innocent people? How did they discover such a business in the first place, and how does such a business seemingly thrive, not only through what has to be word-of-mouth advertising only, but also skirting the law? Perhaps Roth will answer these questions in Hostel Part II.

Hostel Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Hostel features a very drab, gray look about it through most of the runtime, but that doesn't hurt this 1080p, 2.35:1 transfer one bit. Because of its style, however, it doesn't quite amount to being a potentially reference grade presentation when compared to some bigger budget Blu-ray discs from Sony such as Casino Royale. Colors are accurate, flesh tones are natural in appearance, and details are vivid throughout. This is a very good offering from Sony with only a few discernible flaws to be found. There is a bit of grain in some of the darker scenes and blacks tend to be slightly crushed at times. The transfer fares well in the early portions of the movie where the film is bright and cheerful, and as we inch closer to the final act, colors fade and turn to an almost near black palette when we arrive in the torture rooms. The disc handles the transition well, never losing detail or clarity even in the most poorly lit scenes.

Hostel Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Sony presents Hostel with a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack. To say I was impressed is an understatement. This soundtrack features great ambience at times and deep bass in the chilling music and torture scenes. The sounds of dripping water and blood will have you believing you have a leak in your living room. The sounds of footsteps, voices, slamming doors, and chainsaws echoing in the torture chambers are downright chilling. The first two acts of the movie are nothing special sonically, but dialogue and music come through crystal clear. Dialogue sometimes sounds as if it was recorded on a soundstage with some ambience that seemed a little out of place, but I only noticed this in a few places. There are some rather good directional effects scattered throughout, but the soundtrack really takes off in the final act. It certainly adds to the dread and brutality of the film, and it simply works. The sound design was the only part of the movie I truly enjoyed. The opening title sequence sounds great, too. Sony has hit a home run with this track.

Hostel Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

If you are a fan of Hostel, you're in for a treat. This is a jam-packed special edition highlighted by four feature commentaries. The first track features Eli Roth and executive producers Quentin Tarantino, Boaz Yakin, and Scott Spiegel. There is a lot going on here with Tarantino talking over the other participants quite a bit, but it's clear he is passionate about this film and is very proud of it, and his love for these types of films.

The second track features Roth along with a hodgepodge of guests including editor George Folsey Jr., Harry Knowles of aintitcoolnews.com, Barbara Nedeljakova (Natalya), and Eythor Gudjonsson (Oli). All bring something unique to the table, but the chats with Folsey Jr., and Knowles are the best.

The third again has director Roth, this time teamed up with producer Chris Briggs and documentarian Gabriel Roth. By this time the tracks start to run together. We get some background on each individual, but the track gives some good detail here and there, especially about the final act. They discuss how parts of the brutality are not only hard to watch, but hard to create and look at and smell on-set. We learn how some of the gore is created and how the actors were never really in peril when it appears they are on-screen (for example, a chainsaw that appears close to Jay Hernandez's face is in fact not close to him). I enjoyed this track the most, even though I was starting to tire of listening to them.

The fourth and final track is a solo effort by Roth. He loves to talk and dead air is never a problem. The highlight is Roth discussing audience reaction to the film. People got sick watching the gore, and Roth (seemingly) jokes about hoping that someone will die while watching one of his films, as happened with The Passion of the Christ. He (seemingly) jokes that a death would be tragic because that individual could not buy the DVD. Talk about poor taste.

Moving past the commentaries, Hostel contains several noteworthy additional supplements. Hostel Dissected (480p) is a three part, 55 minute look at the making of the film from pre- production to the wrapping up of the final cut of the film. It's crude and blatantly honest in its look into the making of the film. Next up is a feature entitled Kill the Car!--Multi-Angle (480p) that features different angles showing the destruction of an automobile near the end of the film. It's a throwaway extra for the most part. Four featurettes--Music and Sound (480p, 12:16) with composer Nathan Barr, Set Design (480p, 5:04) with production designer Franco-Giacomo Carbone, KNB EFX (480p, 11:10) with Howard Berger and Gregory Nicotero, and An Icelandic Meal With Eythor Gudjonsson (480p, 3:17)--are included on the disc. The KNB EFX featurette is the best of the bunch, as it provides a fairly in-depth look at the making of the gore in a compact and to-the-point manner.

Also provided are 10 deleted scenes that run about 19 minutes in length combined. Each are featured in 1080p with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. Each comes with a brief text-based introduction. Next is an interview with Takashi Miike (480p, 9:52). It's in Japanese with English subtitles. He discusses his acting and directing career, his goals, the process of making films, and his work on Hostel. Hostel Dismembered (480p, 30:08) features discussions about the origins of the idea for the movie, the approach to making a movie that will stand the test of time and not one that will gross enough at the box office and be forgotten several weeks later, and why films such as Hostel are popular today.

An alternate ending to the film is available. It's much more subdued and foregoes the violence of the original ending in favor of what has to be an even worse fate for the antagonist of the film. As with the other deleted scenes, it is presented in 1080p high definition with Dolby TrueHD sound. Please note that you may watch the movie in its entirety with this alternate ending in tact replacing the original ending by choosing to do so on the main menu.

Rounding off this disc is a radio interview with Roth, photo galleries, and trailers for Hostel Part II, Vacancy, and Blood and Chocolate, all in 1080p.

Hostel Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Hostel is not for everyone. Eli Roth himself says so. It's brutal, dark, atmospheric, and unrelenting in its depiction of gore. Sony has put a lot of effort into this disc, and fans of the movie are going to be ecstatic with what is included here. Both picture and sound quality are top notch and there is a day's worth of extras for your perusal. I cannot recommend this disc on the merits of the movie alone, but for those of you that like it, buy it. You won't be disappointed in the least.