In 2023,Eli Rothfinally released his highly-anticipated filmThanksgiving, much to the delight of horror fans.WhileThanksgivingis a gory affair, it’s also a simple and fun slasher. You walk away from it with a smile on your face. The same can’t be said for Roth’s earlier works.His first feature film, 2002’sCabin Fever, is well crafted, but it’s so dark and disturbing, with such realistic gore, that it leaves viewers shaken. Then came 2006’sHostel. Along withSawtwo years before,it helped birth the unfortunate-named “torture porn” trope.Hostel, with its story of young American travelers in Europe who are abducted by rich men who pay to kill them, is as bleak as it gets. There is some hope among the bloodshed in its ending, butthe original finale — one that was not only written but filmed — was so depressing that Eli Roth decided he couldn’t show it.
Three backpackers head to a Slovak city that promises to meet their hedonistic expectations, with no idea of the hell that awaits them.
What Happens at the End of ‘Hostel’?
SawandHostelget lumped together in the splatter subgenre, but if you thoughtSawwas dark,Hosteltook it to a new level.You could look at those traps inSawand be grossed out by what they could do, while still having a bit of detachment from the horror due to its over-the-top nature.Hostel, however, is grounded in its bleak realism. It tells the story of two American college kids, Paxton Rodriguez (Jay Hernandez) and Josh Brooks (Derek Richardson),deciding to travel through Europe. They end up in a Slovakian hostel having the time of their lives with beautiful women but are then drugged.Josh wakes up in a dungeon and finds himself taken captive by a Dutch businessman(Jan Vlasák) who has paid to kill him.Josh is brutally butchered. Paxton is then brought to another demented man who has paid to kill. Paxton loses a few fingers but is able to fight back and kill his aggressor. He then rescues a maimed woman named Kana (Jennifer Lim) and flees the building they are trapped in.
Eli Roth’s ‘Hostel’ Was Inspired By a Horrifying Murder Website
Just when you thought ‘Hostel’ couldn’t get any more twisted…
Hostelisn’t going to let us have a happy, easy ending, however. Paxton and Kana make it to a train station, but when the latter sees her deformed reflection, she jumps in front of a train, ending her own life. Paxon gets on another train, having escaped, though he’ll never be the same. It’s then that he hears the voice of the Dutch businessman. Wanting revenge,Paxton follows him off the train when it stops and kills him in a bathroom. The nightmare isn’t over, but at least this man will never hurt anyone else ever again. There is resolution in that ending, the hero having prevailed over the villain, butHostel’s original ending went for something even more disturbing.
‘Hostel’s Original Ending Was Much Darker
From the beginning, Eli Roth — who also wroteHostel —had a different ending in mind,one he explained to IGN in 2006. The original film idea goes in the same direction until the last scenes. Paxton makes it to the train, he discovers the Dutch businessman, but he finds a different way to get to him. Rather than simply killing the man, he wants to make him suffer. In this ending —which can be watched on YouTube— the Dutch businessman has a young daughter with him. He goes to the bathroom alone and is never approached and assaulted by Paxton, though he does find a scalpel left behind on the sink, showing us that Paxton was there but changed his mind. The man walks back out to the train station, waiting for his daughter to come out of the women’s bathroom, but she never shows. He goes inside to look for her, then comes rushing back out, holding her teddy bear. His daughter is gone.
The Dutch businessman runs around the station, panicking, screaming for his daughter. He can’t find her, but then, in the last shot, we see her.Paxton sits at a window on a train pulling away from the station. Sitting on his lap is the girl. She is scared, her face contorted in fear, struggling to get free, but he holds her down, a hand by her mouth, a look of pain on his own face too. What does that look say? Is he rescuing her from her father or is he going to hurt her as the ultimate act of revenge?
Eli Roth Wisely Chose Not To Use ‘Hostel’s Original Ending
This ending toHostelis definitely more shocking.Having Paxton kill the Dutch businessman in the used ending is expected. It’s a much-needed cathartic finale — but we can see it coming. Having him kill the businessman might have been an easier way out of the movie, but it’s an effective one. The alternate ending instead wanted to shock the audience. It leads us down a path we think we know when the man goes into the bathroom. We wait for Paxton to attack, but Eli Roth doesn’t give it to us, rather he subverts expectations by making an innocent child the target.
In the 2006 interview with IGN, Roth talked about why he changed the ending ofHostel. Though the alternate ending doesn’t show what happens after it cuts to black, Roth explained what Paxton does. He’s not rescuing the girl, nor is he holding her for ransom. It’s not an ending open to interpretation, but a concrete savagery. He is going to slit her throat,and in the script he does. Roth told IGN: “When I was writing it, I thought that’s a fate worse than death, to have your child murdered like that, and it gets back to this guy.”
It took a few of Roth’s friends, includingQuentin Tarantino(who also producedHostel), to change his mind. They told him that it felt like he was trying to be “the shocking guy,” and that it wasn’t at all believable that Paxton would kill a kid. They told himhe was trying to build a reputation as a bad boy filmmaker, a distinction which was the last thing he wanted. He realized that he was being shocking just to be shocking, which is not what he wantedHostelto be about, so he wrote and filmed a new ending. While the alternate ending is more terrifying, it’s also not honest with its audience by telling us that our hero, who we have been rooting for this whole time, could kill a child. It’s not the act of shocking violence that would have angered an audience, but the lie told to us.Roth made the right choice in deciding on a more conventional final scene forHostel. There is resolution, there is realism in our protagonist, and the horror is still left intact.
