HOSTILE at Hostel
June 27th 2007 00:29
In last weekend’s The Sun-Herald columnist Miranda Devine had a short side-article headed up “Sick flick plumbs depths”. In it she blasted Hostel: Part II (2007) as being “the most disgusting, sadistic torture-porn movie ever to hit mainstream cinema”. Further on in the brief article Devine admits she hasn’t seen the movie, but then quotes Paul, an “aggrieved Sydney father” who expressed his disgust in an email saying; “What is Greater Union doing screening [the movie] daily now that the school holidays have started? Do [they] have no respect for suburban families? Am I supposed to be watching Shrek 3 with my kids knowing in the next room there are distressed women being ferociously beaten [on screen]?”
Devine goes on to quote The Age’s movie critic Jim Schembri who described the movie as “an unfathomably vile piece of misogynist, sadistic pornography that features several prolonged sequences where young women are beaten, tortured, sliced up and bled to death”.
At the end of her article Devine mentions how the box office takings for the movie have been luke warm, which she suggests has something to do with audiences having more taste than writer/director Eli Roth had hoped for. Apparently Roth has blamed internet piracy. Devine has the last word, saying “Serves him right”.
I also noted that SMH’s S-Entertainment section movie reviewer Rob Lowing gave Hostel: Part II a 4 out of 10 rating, but I couldn’t locate the complete review to fully comment. I never seem to agree with her opinions anyhow.
With Hostel: Part II Roth manages to instill the kind of relentlessly dark, brooding and altogether ominous tone which has been missing in most of the new crop of horror movies which have been released over the past few years. Horror movies are trendy again. The proliferation of titles has been climbing ever since Scream (1996), but the calibre has softened considerably. There is a conservatism that is prevalent through the mainstream, (and the slightly left of) releases. A couple of recent exceptions (The Descent and The Hills Have Eyes remake), but generally the modern horror movie has become innocuous and lame.
Nothing like a little torture-porn ...
... to stir the horror pot of contention
As for the aggrieved father complaining about having to sit with his kids in a cinema next door to another cinema playing Hostel: Part II, well tough titty. It’s an R18 rated horror movie. Do I complain about the derivative, confectionary drivel of Shrek the Third playing next to me while I’m trying to enjoy my honest-to-Darkness torture-porn? No.
Horror movies are not called horror movies because they’re meant to conjure up flowers and butterflies, and all things safe and nice. They serve a purpose, just as the candy floss of Shrek the Third does. Dangerous, confronting, frightening, repulsive; these are the adjectives which lure a horrorphile to the cinema. People should stick to their own medicine - one person’s potion is another person’s poison – and stop preaching morality issues in the face of the Darkness, it doesn’t sit right with me.
| 88 |
| Vote |
Subscribe to this blog
Comment by Damo
For the Sake of Argument
My Apologetics
It is not often that I will disagree with your well writen columns but on this occassion I shall (from another viewpoint).
The foreamentioned critics are playing upon your worst fears and saying things that horrify you. Did they call for the film to be banned? No. They just canned it based upon what they consider to be the standards of a good movie and for that matter a good horror movie.
Saddism is not everyones cup of tea. People love horror in the same way they love thrill rides. Images that you may find challenging others find haunting and disturbing for weeks after seeing them. Fair enough I say. If they say that to someone else, so what?
This is a horror story from another viewpoint because the horror is the possibility that the director will bomb out and never get finance for another film. It could also mean that the genre of splatter and torture flicks have a limited market.
A gerneration that has grown up watch medical docos and CSI splatter may also be harder to shock. However they may still have a sense of empathy that makes them reluctant to enjoy watching people suffer endlessly.
As such I would argue that the critics are performing a horror play to the horror hounds.
Just stiring the pot
Damo
Comment by Justin
I'm aware of Miranda's style in that she's a columnist whose suddenly got page spreads of her "opinions", and that's where I discount her. Unless she's seen the film, as a purveyor and critic she really needs to watch the film to legitimise her as-yet ignorant views.
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Sex and horror are the most obvious points of contention with the so-called "moral majority" ... People who claim porn is reprehensible are the same people who would say horror movies are reprehensible. Sure, there are examples of both where it is possible to argue the producers and/or directors ethics are questionable, but it is the high horse that pisses me off. And especially when it is sat upon without any actual context for argument, such as Miranda Devine having not even seen the movie she's bagging out.
The argument of the father complaining about having the horror movie being screened in the adjacent cinema to the family film is tenuous at best. He probably complains about the hookers on William Street soliciting their wares when he drives past with the kids in the back of the car.
One of the points I was trying to make in my vitroilic diatribe was that Hostel is nothing new. There've been so-called "torture-porn" horror movies for decades. Bloodsucking Freaks (1963), Last House on the Left (1972), The Last House on Dead End Street (1977), I Spit on Your Grave (1978) ... I'll admit that many of these aren't particularly well made films, or particularly pleasant to watch either, but they fit a certain mold; transgressive cinema.
Comment by KylieW
Celebrity Obsession
Okay I'm trying to comment for the 3rd fucking time thanks to Orble gremlins!!!!
I agree with you totally on this one. Critics who give their opinions when they are woefully uninformed annoy the hell out of me. Seen the movie and have an opinion....no problem, tell me about it. But if you haven't taken the time to see it in order to form an opinion.....well then you just get to shut the hell up!!
Violence is nothing new. Neither is sex. But horror movies like this will always be an easy target for ignorant conservatives.
As for the father offended that the movie is showing where his kids watch movie. Well personally, I find it offensive that whenever I go to the movies that there are kids running around everywhere that parents don't even attempt to control......but I'm not calling for the little b**tards to be banned from the cinema......though I'd bloody well like to.
Grrrr....it just makes me angry.
Kylie
Comment by Cibbuano
20/20 Filmsight
Science News
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
I down with Roth's statement. If I go to see an R-rated movie, I want it all. Nudity, violence. Give it to me.
I also think Damo brought up a good point... it's kind of good that these people are complaining about it, because that means that mainstream culture hasn't become totally desensitized to horror. Which means it's still got some momentum!
One thing I can't stand is people getting steamed up about things they don't know anything about. Reviewing a movie without having watched it? Man, what the hell. I haven't seen Spiderman 3, but I've got a fist full of angry bees about it. Review, shall I?
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Cibby, I concur.
Comment by Anonymous
I too like my horror different. If that means torture, sex and the kitchen sink, I welcome it as long as my stomache agrees. I was a bit squeemish during a couple of the parts mentioned in films above, but they did elicit a primal response in me that I'm glad to acknowledge. If all of my theatre-going experiences were like that, I'd be a content women.
And instead of looking towards those that bemoan and demonize the fringes (for what do their views *really* matter?), I say examine anyone who has the balls to take issue with the mainstream. That's more of a radical stand than any Hostel critique could ever be.
- lilith (whose still following along)
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Long live the New Flesh!
Comment by Mountain Fog
Infognito
In all totalitarian societies one expects to be told what to watch, read, do and express...last time I voted I did think we were in a democracy...ok, so it's really just a capitalist faux democracy!
Anyway, my point is thus; I may not want to see people or animals suffer 'in extremis' for entertainment, like I find it difficult to watch those never ending medical real life shows...the gore...yeccch, but, I will argue till doomsday for another's right to watch or read what they like!
The journos did not have to ask for the film Hostel to be banned, their criticism is designed to achieve the same effect and we know governments only listen to popular opinion when it may start counting in the ballot box.
Then there is the old argument that watching these films will corrupt, which is absurd. The person who goes out and shoots his fellow classmates because of a game or a movie was before, during and after watching the entertainment, a psychopath, waiting to live his/her ugly destiny!
Any trigger would have done. It could have been..."I don't like Mondays!" That was the reason a maniac decided to sit atop a school bell tower and blast away as many students as he could...and yes, that song was lucrative for Geldoff...pity he didn't give some of the proceeds to the victims!
The wowsers who scream for bans in film, games, literature etc when something nasty happens in society, never seem to realize this has, in another way, all happened before.
Life is cyclical...ebb and flow...today it is allowed...tomorrow it is banned...then it comes back again. I bet even Orwell would be aghast at the extent to which so called democracies around the world have been compromised today.
And no, Brave New World and 1984 have not been the cause of this removal/restriction of citizen rights...so called 'terrorism' was, (whomever is really behind all that 911 stuff we are yet to learn) ...and the need for securing an oil supply...and the fact that the USA economy, like a lot of other countries, relies on weapons sales, and you need war for that to be profitable, don't you? And who sees blind negative criticism of war movies in the press...not very often, and usually because it was made into a love story, like Pearl Harbour.
I also hate hypocrisy!
And I apologize for ranting on so...rather borish of me I know!
fog.
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Comment by Morgan Bell
Deep Pencil
Current Business News
Movie Train
Artist Quirk
before a journalist assesses a work and cries out to the townspeople to protest its distribution they at very least owe it to the creator to WATCH IT and give it due consideration . . .
theres a real lack of quality in mainstream media where articles based on rumour and ignorance are accepted for print
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile