Not bad!

Rating: 7/10 (17 April 2006)

The thing about Hostel that separates it from movies such as Saw and other gross out films is it is built on a premise that could be very real, knowing the fall of the USSR. It is an original idea. I recently saw a Law and Order episode where whole blocks of a city in Russia catered to child prostitution so this is not much of a stretch. The gloomy look of the worn out city captures much of the fallen society it is portraying and it's medieval atmosphere. Those two aspects work great.
However what it does wrong is it doesn't take time to make us like the characters headed into the lion's den. I didn't feel anything for any of the suffering characters except for likable Oli, but we don't really experience his pain. Pot smoking, partying teenagers is too much of a cliché and we kind of know where they are headed from square one. Because of that, it loses much of it's impact. The ending escape scene just seemed rushed, contrived and resorts to gross out tactics. This is where Wolf Creek becomes a better film. Wolf Creek went for an unprotected jugular and never let go. Although it resorted to unabashed torture and cringing acts of dominance, torture is never something that should ever be portrayed lightly. This is where Hostel should have went with it's real and horrible subject matter to make it a real classic shocker.
Still I recommend this to anyone except those with no aptitude for watching graphic violence depicted on the screen. It's premise could very well be real and the look of the old city of Bratislava is the stuff horror movies are made of.