Well-made and worth the time

Rating: 7/10 (9 December 2006)

I had read a good deal about this movie before I watched it - that it was a poorly scripted bit of soft-porn trash and such. However, I found Hostel to be a well acted movie with a good atmosphere of foreboding and dread. Given, the first forty-five minutes or so were required to set the stage for what was to follow, but I still believe this portion of the movie could have been shortened a bit. If you watch closely, however, much of what happens in the beginning is very relevant to the latter part of the movie. The violence was nothing close to what I expected based on other reviews, and what scenes were shown seemed necessary to telling the story.
My main complaint is what the hell did he have to cut off the girl's eyeball for when he rescued her? She was screaming as if to imply that her dangling eyeball was paining her. Uh, yes, I'll bet it was, but how about wrapping her face in a cloth or something? This seemed a bit much and simply an excuse to show some pus squirting out of someone's face.
Overall I found Hostel to be an entertaining movie. Yes, it is a gruesome flick, but that should come as no surprise to anyone who knows anything about the genre. I also feel there was a worthwhile message here: all is never as it seems so watch out! Definitely worth the dollars and the time. After watching the glut of teen crap that Hollywood is spewing out these days I appreciated something that at least pretended to take itself seriously.