‘Love Hostel’ – It’s a slickly directed nihilistic gore-fest amounting to much of nothing

A couple is on the run.

The man is from a Muslim background, has a dark past and is stuck making deliveries for a gangster. The girl comes from an affluent Hindu family. Her grandmother is also an MLA. The marriage won’t be accepted by the woman’s family, so the couple decides to run away after applying for registration of their marriage in court. They go to one of the numerous police-protected safe houses, affectionately called “love hostels,” where runaway couples are given sanctuary.

However, unbeknownst to our protagonists, the grandmother has hired an assassin to drag this runaway couple home, or kill them, whichever works.

As a premise and as a milieu-specific genre exercise, Love Hostel shouldn’t be anything less than a thrill ride. This is a special form of delectable dish made specifically for me.

A mix of neo-western and noir takes place in the Indian heartland. But where Love Hostel fails almost spectacularly is in not having much of anything to say.

Films dealing with honour killings, religious and caste differences need a form of sensitivity or nuance to at least cater to a discussion. In a post-Sairat world, it is almost impossible to even assume that there wouldn’t be a discussion about both sides of the equation in a far deeper and more nuanced manner.

However, the film sidesteps all of that, choosing to craft a story and just take the premise of honour killings and inter-faith issues as a premise to cast a gory and bloodthirsty western.

The “hero” of the film is Bobby Deol, and the film knows it. It revels in it.

Deol’s Dagar is like the Terminator, a no-nonsense flat-voiced hitman whose personal bigotry becomes “social services.” It is his job to kill these runaways as a moral obligation. These forms of revelation are terrifying and the decent aspect of the movie is also the lack of exposition.

Snippets of conversation between the couples reveal who they are piece by piece. Jyoti Dilawar (Sanya Malhotra) is an extrovert – the type of person who will not back down from a fight but is also optimistic about the future. Ashu Shokeen (Vikrant Massey) on the other hand, is cynical, apologetic, always on guard and yet soft enough to glimpse the boy yearning for love. The character traits revealed here are refreshing and the film’s running time of 100 minutes makes it feel even brisker than it already is.

The flip-flopping of tonality is what would cause whiplash and disconnect with the audience.

The violence is gore-heavy, almost signifying a horror bent. It makes sense because Dagar’s character showcases an almost skewed view of the world, the imbalance of evil over good. But the violence is also accompanied by moments that might reveal a form of dark comedy, but due to the rapid editing, it shows desensitizing of the violence.

Dagar’s backstory and the interconnected nature of these entire proceedings felt like the screenplay trying to comment on the cyclical or random nature of the violence, but it felt lazy. There are odd moments here where symbolism, having a homosexual couple or a peacock on a crane shows a movie bursting with ideas trying to break its seams, but it is constrained due to being a thriller for 90 minutes.

The biggest issue with the movie is that with all of the violence, gore, the interfaith marriage issue, and honour killings, Love Hostel doesn’t have much, if anything, to say.

Even the nihilism towards the end feels unearned and uninspired. This might be the only way the story could have ended, but in no way was it satisfying or profound. A lot of sound, fury, gunfire, bullets, Bobby Deol’s handsome chiselled face evoking a zealot in the finest role of his career, the cinematography highlighting the dark corridors of the government safe houses, a dog again showing off the kindness present in the deepest darkest corners of psychopaths – it’s a lot, but it doesn’t signify anything.

And that is the disappointing part.

Popcorn Rating –  [2.5/5]

Love Hostel is streaming on ZEE5 Global.

Watch an exclusive chat with Bobby Deol about Love Hostel & more here:

NOTE: THE VIEWS AND OPINION EXPRESSED IN THIS ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR.
Edited by Nidhi Sahani