Sometime ago, I did some reading on Hostel, the gore and macabre movie by Eli Roth. Then came one day I borrowed the DVD to watch Wolf Creek and Hostel, both slasher, mindless killing genre of movies.
(Semi spoilerish)
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Wolf Creek:
While it wasn't as gory as Hostel in terms of the mutilation and other horrendous forms of torture, Wolf Creek sat with me more than Hostel. The characters at the beginning were boring me, really. A little too much of introduction, the mystery and thrill only started well into half way of the movie. At one time, I thought that the lead female - Liz - was ugly by actress standards, which was not typical in movies. Her friend, Kristy wasn't too pretty either. The movie was also very segmented - their escape came in parts. You don't see them together anymore after their capture, except for a small part near the beginning of the escape. But I think that these actually work. The execution of the movie wasn't traditional or dramatic to begin with. Every action taken by the actors were within reasonable realism, and audience get more involved because of this factor. Remember how I thought that the actors looked plain? You may feel even less for a beauty to die in the show, because you'll be reminded that 'it's all show'. Instead, using this tactic, the film is made more believable.
My gripes are that I do not believe Liz's incredible courage. If you find out something horrifying and is life threatening, you don't stay at that place. Instead, she doubles back to save Kristy, and even sets an explosion as a decoy, haha. That's elaborate. She even looked calm when she went in to save her friend. Yet her hands trembled worse than jello on a train when she carried that rifle. She shot Mick on the neck, by rights he should have bled to death, since the jugular veins are the juiciest parts of the body to find arteries and many many veins. Why is the floor dry?
She used the rifle to beat him twice... Er, she can't load the gun again? Ok... How about making sure he's dead by breaking his neck? Stabbing into his wound? Pierce him with the tip of the rifle maybe? Jump onto his neck and spine for paralysis? Why oh why would he simply get up with a new gun, and look so refreshed?! Both are idiots.
And then, Liz declares that they need a car. Then she leaves Kristy alone, asks her to make a break for the road after she's been gone for 5 mins, when she feels that they can't travel out on foot? Kristy did it, ran to the road in the end, it isn't impossible. Speaking of her, notice how the cast don't get dehydration, but just run and run and run. Back to Liz. She promises 5 mins, and then indulges in checking out Mick's place and looking at all the DV cams, pictures, and shouts for Ben?! WTF? Time waster, and totally dangerous, missy! She knows that Mick will return after he realises that they aren't in the truck. Idiotic moment # 3. I don't want to know how Mick creeped into the car that she chose. I wondered how strong this guy is, since his knife pierced through the car seat, which must have fibre, plastic, leather, lots of cotton, and it even pierced right through human flesh? That's like 20+ inch altogether, yet he acted like there was no resistance.
Also, when Liz wakes up, she's bound and gagged. Nothing particularly wrong with her. But if she can be this tightly gagged and still be asleep, then it means that her friends and her are heavily drugged. And why then would Kristy be wide awake and bound at a pillar? She's tortured, humiliated and raped, Ben's tortured and pierced and Liz is kidnapper-style fine? Lol.
Sigh.
Hostel:
Hostel is simply indulgent. In many ways, actually. Too many 'sex scenes'. I couldn't care less about those, if I wanted to watch the horror. While it might be 'to let the audience understand more about the leading characters', I felt that it was weak in that goal -- The total of 3 men, out of which I thought one particular one (Josh) to be the 'lead', turned out to be the second to die. The film carried many loose ends, I was left with 'huh...?' until the end of the film, when I could think and figure out myself what was happening. Maybe it's my slow self, but it wasn't immediately understandable. In fact, prior to watching this, I actually watched a clip extract from the film - the eye part (if you know what I mean). All along when watching hostel, my brain and heart was just preparing for more scenes of such similar kind. I was rather glad that my laptop had little contrast and brightness, so I don't see that much gore.
Indulgent also in the sense that Elio Roth probably was more focussed on getting the grossness of human mutilation and torture. Yes, those worked all right, but the rest of the film was just weak. Like the part before the last guy went into the 'artshow', there was very little tension build up. In fact, it resembled a cheesy teen kidnapping case or something. I mean come on; let's have the first guy Oli as an example: The moment he dissapears, his backpacking mates get concerned about him? So they did hold off and said something like 'We'll see him at breakfast.' Then Josh begins to get more worried, even blowing off the two girls Natalia and one other random one "I just want to find my friend and get the fuck home." Normal human beings won't be this close. If 3 men met from 3 different places - Iceland, California and America, what are the chances that in a few hours they become the closest of buddies? The intro didn't serve to explain that. They only showed how much sex they had, and were interested in. That does not justify how much concern they were pouring in for their 'friend'. And the 'Josh hallucinating Oli at the bar' part was just LMAO. That's like... a son seeing his dead mom's spirit thing or something.
He's yer boyfriend or sommit? Overly dramatised. I was totally ripped out by the roots and was immediately reminded with a megaphone that it's a freaking movie with camera crew etc.
Many things weren't realistic. A picture message of Oli, with his mouth hanging like a zombie, and glazed eyes actually bought his friends over? WTF? Even with the lame text 'I GO HOME.' ?? Which idiot would believe something like that?!
The last guy (forgot his name) still wanted to grab his lost fingers from the floor when they were freshly severed; wanted to grab them when those fingers fell out of the push cart filled with human parts. (Note that he laid in there comfortably) He obviously felt lots of hope, since he's already thinking to have a surgery to have his fingers reattached. He could just slip a glove over his severed fingers and everything is all right after that. Wouldn't a wound like that fester or get infected or something? Instead of bleeding to death, a glove would suffice? Ok... When he finally escapes, and he heard a woman's scream, he ran right into the heart of the dungeons to save her? So was
that why there was this lame part about him telling Josh about the time when 'Oh, when I was younger, I tried to save a young girl from drowning but it didn't work because she died, and I felt so bad for her mom blah blah' dialogue? So he feels that he failed to save a girl that time, and this time he has to? Come on. When you're faced with a scene of your 'dear friends' being so horribly mutilated and stuff, you can be this calm? And even if you do feel bad for a past guilt, what makes you think that you can save the girl, when she's been screaming like that for so long? When you get to her, she's prolly already half gone. Literally. It's hilarious, really. And I'm not even caring to sound eloquent anymore. It feels like the scriptwriter realised that he couldn't explain how the last guy went to save the japanese girl, and created a stupid lame history in hopes of filling it up. This film lacks realism. Period. I don't even want to say anymore.
