A film that makes you ask Why?

Rating: 4/10 (29 September 2007)

I got this film on a recommendation, and given that I enjoy horror films in general, I thought I'd rent it and see what I thought.
From the outset I was just waiting for the main characters to get killed off, they were bland and banal, and for the first 40-50 minutes the only enjoyment you're likely to get from this film is the several shots of pretty girls, and several of them naked.
When the plot actually kicks in, the idea is at first laughable, as these three friends wander off to eastern Europe to find the fabled hostel. What follows I suppose is intended to be shocking, but the set-up is so horrendous that I was waiting for some sort of twist or extra dimension to rescue this film which was already circling the drain.
What follows mixes a few stereotypes in with some slightly substandard special effects, and finishes it off with such disdain that you wonder if the screenplay was written in an afternoon.
I'm unsure of the intended target demographic of this film, given that it would have appealed more to me if I had been around 14-15, although as far as I'm aware its an 18 certificate.
And as for Tarantino, I truly wonder if he has lost the plot a little, and it puts me off watching his future work if he was so ready to plaster his name over this half-baked project.
Avoid this if you can, there's a huge range of better films out there.