It's an age-old adage that audiences like to be grossed out. Viewers have loved to be scared for as long as art has existed, and with cinema, the boundaries of human terror have been pushed to their limits. But how far is too far? Is there a limit on what viewers will accept, or does our insatiable hunger to bear witness to greater and greater terrors mean there will always be an audience for the worst thing you can think of? That's certainly the philosophy of one Eli Roth, and the film made 20 years ago that birthed a new era of Hollywood horror.
Inspired by a conversation with Harry Knowles (yikes) about looking for "the sickest thing [one] could find on the internet," and an alleged "murder vacation" website located on the dark web, Roth decided to create a no-holds-barred gore-fest that leveled up the gruesomeness he pulled off in his flesh-rotting debut, Cabin Fever. The result was Hostel, and it certainly lived up to his blood-stained agenda.
