Why Horror Film Director Eli Roth Sucks
Cabin Fever and Hostel Among the Most Overrated Films of All Time
Oct 10, 2009
Eli Roth sucks! He is among today's most contemptible, misguided directors alongside Uwe Boll or Alex Aja. Here is why:
Cabin Fever
Roth makes no effort to create a fully developed narrative because Cabin Fever is all middle; no beginning and no end. As if he decided what films he wanted to riff but never got past the planning stage because he has no concept of narrative structure.
Moreover, Roth wants it both ways: to be both horror and comedy. Yes, both Romero and Raimi (clearn inspirations) have been able to blend horror and comedy together wonderfully but that's because their narratives leant themselves to comedy. Dawn of the Dead was a satire and Evil Dead 2 used goofy make-up and gore to create a slapstick environment.
Roth however, doesn't come near having the same kind of control over his tone. Cabin Fever is dark and disgusting; it strives to be truly unnerving but then comes all undone when it tries to be funny and random. It begins with a moment of shocking racism and ends with the explanation, which is even more racist, a police officer character is so insistent on his love of partying that he brings every scene he is in to a dead halt, and the infamous pancakes scene has no place or purpose.
Not to mention that all of this meandering, unfunny randomness occurs in a horror film which is bleak, vile, and repulsive. If Cabin Fever proved anything about Eli Roth it was that he was an excited young filmmaker with an idea but not the slightest clue on where to begin in developing it.
Hostel
Hostel is a slight improvement but not by much. The first 15 minutes reveal where Roth's priorities lie and it's not with the fascinating social commentary that is hiding around the edges of the film. Thus, Hostel is a potentially good film in search of a filmmaker who has enough of a clue to know what to do with it.
Instead Roth spends the first half of the film showing lots of sex, naked women, people doing drugs, etc. There is no problem when horror films spend a good deal of time creating a mood around their characters so that it is even more penetrating when it is ripped out from under them, but the beginning of Hostel is nonsense, spending the time it should be using to make the characters likable to instead see how many naked breasts it can cram into the least bit of time.
When it finally comes time for the film to get to the horror, it falters for the same reason all horror movies that center on torture falter: because it is unwilling to take responsibility for the acts that it shows. There is no pleasure in seeing torture, it does not entertain. Wes Craven's Last House on the Left worked so well because it was a film that dealt with true evil instead of simply presenting evil acts to the audience for shock value.
Hostel is all context and no subtext. It shows extreme violence and gore, but doesn't understand why this is happening other than that Roth is coloring between the lines of the horror film genre: gore for the sake of gore.
Roth also struggles with tone in Hostel. The filmdeals with truly dark and disturbing subject matter and that's the tone it should have kept throughout, but instead there is more of Roth's pretentiousness that he passes off as humor.
Examples: the scene where kids attack a limo. The music while this is happening is comical, especially during a shot in which a man has his head crushed with a rock. Maybe Mr. Roth finds crushed heads to be grounds for comedy, but maybe if he didn't concern himself with such useless endeavors he would have found the true heart of Hostel as a bleak social commentary on the cold, callous evilness inside humans that would drive them to kill other defenseless people for pure sport. That might have been what Roth was aiming for. It was beyond his reach.
Hostel 2
Hostel 2 is Roth's best film (aesthetically it has some striking images that deserve a better film), but still meanders, flounders and has no control over its own tone.
Roth seems to be headed in the right direction when he introduces two of the guys who have paid to kill some kidnapped girls, but unfortunately Roth ultimately decides to focus on the girls and once again misses the real story.
By not focusing on the killers, Roth has shifted the focus away from the social commentary inherent in the film and instead shows that he has no greater desire than to again show torture for the sake of torture.
Pretentiousness again abounds as the Bathory blood bath scene serves no greater narrative purpose than Roth thought it would be a cool way to kill off a character, the kids return once again and one of them is killed in a scene that should be haunting and painful but doesn't work because these kids serve no narrative purpose and the death doesn't make sense: what does it's presence achieve?
If the film deserves any praise, it is that it feels more restrained (less nudity and drugs) but it still doesn't take responsibility for the torture it subjects, even though it has all the right elements in place to do so.
Granted, the final revelation is interesting, but then Roth, who understands nothing of tone, ends the film, not on a dark and gruesome note with an image that would leave something to talk about, but rather with upbeat, comical music as those stupid kids kick a severed head around like a soccer ball.
It's things like that that makes it evident Eli Roth is too narrow sighted, too short reaching, to ever make a film as scary, clever or witty as Romero and Raimi have. Roth is simply presenting himself as a kid screwing around in a genre that his mentors took very seriously and in turn made great films from.
