Boring, obvious, and a total waste of time and money.

Rating: 2/10 (22 January 2006)

I went to see HOSTEL tonight with some friends. I'm going to give a brief rant here, but I won't spoil anything for you in case you still want to see it after reading this.
This pile of crap is an abomination to the movie industry!
Let me start off with a little advice... Don't waste $7-$15 on seeing this in the theater. Hell, don't even waste $5 to rent the DVD.
The only way this movie is going to make money is PURELY on the "hype" from the TV previews/trailers.
It had a decent plot and pretty good actors, but there was just WAY too much dead time. For the first 40 minutes, you sit there wondering when something is going to happen. During that time, you figure out the whole movie and then nothing is a surprise later on. But then, after they DON'T surprise you (because you already figured it out), they try to explain it to you. Only a total moron wouldn't have figured it out already. The whole movie and every single character was so friggin' obvious.
Additionally, the previews say things like "In test audiences, ambulances were called and people were puking in theaters because it's so graphic!" What the hell are they talking about? Graphic? OK, sure, I wouldn't suggest taking a child to it, but it's nowhere near as gory as they made it out to be. THE DEVIL'S REJECTS was 100 times more gory and it was MUCH MUCH MUCH more entertaining.
Simply, it was a good idea that they threw in the toilet with lousy directing. Part of it is because they thought they were so smart they'd have to spell everything out for the stupid movie-goers. It's a blood-and-guts movie for god's sake; it doesn't need much of a plot and you don't have to spell anything out (as long as you have a decent director and screenplay writer).
I'm no movie director/writer/producer, but as I walked out, I thought, "Even I could have made this SO much better." There was so much room for more action and more gore, but they didn't take the opportunity. Maybe they were trying to avoid an NC-17 rating or something, but it could have been so much better.
Don't waste your time or your money on this steaming pile of anal leakage...