Hostel Mug

Relating to the film: Hostel is a 2006 thriller film directed by Eli Roth and produced/presented by Quentin Tarantino. The film follows three backpackers traveling Europe in search of good time (read: sex and drugs). They are told of a hostel in Slovakia where the women are extremely available, especially to Americans. They have an odd encounter with a Dutch Businessman on the train there, and arrive getting truly what they expected. However, the Eastern-European community begins to show its dark side as a background of the place and a certain connection with a local business there begins to rear its ugly head. The travelers are lured in by women and drugs and launched into an unimaginable nightmare as they become the victims of an underground Russian-Mafia-ran business called Elite Hunting, where jaded wealthy people can pay to torture and kill people who have been taken hostage, much like how prostitution works. Due to the graphic nature of the film, it has been considered, over the years, "torture porn", or at least a major icon in that sub-genre. Many fans of the film counter this idea however. By intentions of the director, Hostel is an extremely dark social satire, which comments on the issues of the price of life, the moral limits of commercial enterprise, the dark inevitable side of huamn nature, a culture that thrives on violence, the occuasional ignorance of American culture for seeing other nations as uncivilized and compares the profession of prostitution to a profession of torture (Elite Hunting). The film is controversial for many reasons. It's extremely violent nature which has gotten it its label of "torture porn", the misrepresentation of Slovakians, the controversy over whether or not the story is inspired by true events (as it was billed). Many Slovakians in government and in their public were extremely offended by the film, seeing it as a ridiculous portrayal as a poverty-stricken and violent Mafia-ran country. Many critics are divided on their thoughts on Hostel, but reaction its 2007 sequel Hostel: Part II were generally negative, as it was also a box office bomb.