Hostel-ity

I caught the movie Hostel today. This is the newest horror film from the director who made Cabin Fever, a film with both good and bad moments in it. Hostel, I have to say, is a movie with neither.

This is not a "chased by the bad guy" slasher movie. It's not really a psychological thriller -- perhaps it could have been, but the film does not delve much into the psychological aspects of its premise. Instead, it's basically mind-numbing blood and guts. It's sphincter-clenchingly violent and gross.

Truth is, it's not much of a movie. It's a "concept," really. It might have worked well as a short story. But once you've heard the premise, you've seen the movie. There's a place somewhere in Eastern Europe where you can pay money to be put in a room with a victim to torture, maim, and murder anonymously in whatever means you see fit. Watch what happens when our frat boy-like heroes get caught up in it.

More disturbing than the movie itself was an experience I had in the theater. I had been called by my friends who were meeting me at the movie, and told to just go on in and hold seats. I'm holding my seat and two others, one seat in from the end of a row.

In walks a woman in her late 40s, maybe early 50s. She looks about the theater for a moment, and her eyes fall near me. I enter "seat defense mode" and tell her I need these two other seats. She hesitates for a moment, then sits down right there at the end of the row. She could have had many other seats in the auditorium, but parked it right there.

So two things here:

1) Am I wrong, or doesn't "movie etiquette" (I know, "ha, like there is such a thing anymore") dictate that unless you're forced to sit next to a stranger due to a crowded theater, you should put at least a one-empty-seat buffer between you and any total stranger at the movies?

2) What the hell is a woman in her 40s/50s doing at a movie like this completely alone? I swear, I was starting to wonder just a bit if she was maybe there looking for pointers on how to run her own "hostel." Creepy!

Anyway... I give the movie a D, and really only that high on the strength of some phenomenally gruesome, well-realized makeup effects.