On Netflix you can watch a horror shock as cruel as it is controversial – this can only make you sick!

Eli Roth (“Knock Knock”) has been one of the most interesting filmmakers in contemporary horror cinema for twenty years. This is mainly because Roth not only has a distinct passion for the harder tempo (blood, mesentery and the like are among the man’s good manners), but also because he has mastered the mechanics of the genre, constantly playing with them alone but to show a teacher-like gesture. Even his debut, the epidemic shocker “Cabin Fever,” was an ambiguous, self-reflective FSK-18 bash.

“Hostel,” probably Eli Roth’s best-known directorial work to date, is cut from very similar material, but nevertheless sees itself as a completely different visual experience. Because even if you see some black humor here and there, the representative of the no ironic genre fun, but a deeply cruel reckoning with dirty tourism, sensationalism and the perverse forms of modern capitalism. Haven’t seen “Hostel” yet? Then you can currently subscribe to the movie from Netflix to repeat.

That’s what “Hostel” is all about

Party, alcohol and lots of fast sex. That’s exactly what the two American backpackers Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and Josh (Derek Richardson) expect, who met the Icelander Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson) on their European tour and have been traveling as a trio ever since. A promising insider tip soon leads holidaymakers to a hostel in Bratislava.

Here they meet the beauties Natalya (Barbara Nedeljakova) and Svetlana (Jana Kaderabkova) and have a night of drinks. The next morning, however, Oli is nowhere to be found. Paxton and Josh go in search of him but fail. When Josh finally disappears from the face of the earth without a trace, it is clear to Paxton that his buddies desperately need help. But the nightmare has only just begun…

A modern torture classic

It’s fair to say that in the last 20+ years there have been few films that have had such an impact on the genre as Hostel. It begins with the groundbreaking ingenious viral marketing, which has long given the impression that we are about to see what is probably the most difficult movie of all time. That was not the case in the end, but those who still went to school when “Hostel” appeared in the cinemas will remember that there was really only one subject in the schoolyard: who dares to watch “Hostel”? Who has already seen “Hostel”? Who knows people who have already seen “Hostel” and can report about it?

With a little distance, however, you’ll soon see that “Hostel” doesn’t need blood streams to unleash its violence. Although Eli Roth is certainly not a prude when it comes to brutality, the film mainly lives on the chilling idea that such horrific things really happen in some remote industrial complex as Eli Roth describes in his film. What an authentic scaremongering “hostel” really is is also evident from the fact that the city of Bratislava has put a letter online in which it is made clear that as a tourist you do not have to fear for your life here, but one can spend time in a beautiful way.

The clever thing about “Hostel” is that Eli Roth reflects the vices and exploitation. While our backpackers are mainly out to completely relentlessly and selfishly satisfy their own lusts and are constantly looking for the ultimate fuck paradise, the tide is turning very quickly. The exploiters become commodities when they eventually become entangled in a ring of traffickers. Roth quotes himself from the exploitation cinema of the 1970s, always leading the horror back to its origins. There are no supernatural beings here, just people who have too many opportunities to indulge their inner cruelty.

Ultimately, ‘Hostel’ focuses on a society dominated by power fantasies, which cannibalizes itself in an endless vicious circle – both figuratively and in a very physical sense. But we must not forget that “Hostel” also acts as a superficial shocker dealing with human abysses and in the last third it turns into a real revenge thriller. Whereby Eli Roth never advocates the desired act of retaliation, but makes it understandable from a human point of view. And just thinking about how palpable all the horror is here is truly sickening.