Headscratchers / Hostel

• So, what was the rationale for killing Todd and leaving Beth alive? Both did essentially the same thing, mortally wound somebody and leaving them to bleed out. Whitney was explicitly said to not have much longer after he cut her with a buzzsaw, which is why they sold her at a lower price.
  • I don't see the comparison. Todd was a client, not one of the prisoners, and he blatantly violated the company's policy by leaving his prisoner alive and abandoning station. Beth was one of the prisoners and so from the company's perspective she had no responsibilities at all and was supposed to die regardless. The only reason they ultimately let her live was that she managed to turn the tables by holding Stuart hostage and then making a deal with them, helped immensely by her being independently wealthy and willing to buy her way out of the situation.
  • It's not a legalistic thing. The rule about killing someone is intended to make sure people who leave there don't go running to the police out of remorse, by making sure they're the type of person who can kill someone without, well, crying and collapsing on the floor like Todd did. Beth castrated a man and fed what she'd cut off to a dog. She IS that type. She could still go to the police out of revenge, but, well, that's what the mandatory tattoo is for. She'd be as likely to be considered a perpetrator as a victim.
• Is it really plausible this could be the massive enterprise that's shown AND that the clients would get tattoos proving their participation? Governments do tend to notice when their tourist citizens go missing in bulk and their parents and friends start yelling about it, and those governments are going to figure out where pretty quick.
  • I agree. I don't think the premise is plausible in a real-world context. (Torture chambers exist, of course, but not in the way these films suggest, as some kind of massive underground commercial enterprise for random rich sadists. At least I don't think so; I'm not exactly an expert on this subject, and if anyone has evidence to correct me, I'm all ears.) I will say, though, that the films imply that whoever is behind the organization is powerful and well-connected and has essentially bribed local authorities into looking the other way. In other words, its plausibility is roughly on par with that of a typical conspiracy thriller—for better or worse.
  • The local police are in on it, as is the hostel. Anyone staying at the hostel has to make a reservation there and leave their passports at the front desk. Any physical evidence that they stayed there can easily be destroyed, especially since the rooms are shared with plants like Natalya and Svetlana. There's no apparent bus or train to the town, and the Americans needed to hitch a lift with someone driving there - so there's less of a paper trail tracing them to that specific place. When Paxton reports Josh missing, he does so to the police, who obviously aren't going to do anything. And you must remember that in the 2000s, there was no social media with immediate evidence of where a person might be or instant, easy communication across the world. If you think about Josh's case in particular, he and Paxton were going to be in Europe for a while, and it would only be once they didn't get on their flight home that friends and family would start to worry. It could take forever to trace where they possibly went missing, since the paper trail would end with the train ticket to Slovakia (and they could have easily paid in cash and therefore been harder to trace online) - and if the trail brought them to the town then obviously the police, where they stayed and the people they spent most of their time with (Natalya, Svetlana) wouldn't give them any info.