A real good, down-and-dirty picture

Rating: 8/10 (22 January 2006)

POSSIBLE MILD SEMI-SPOILERS
Despite what everyone would have you believe, Hostel is not an exploitive piece of "torture porn" - it's a good little movie with no self-doubt about what it is: a pulpy, unpretentious but scary and effective flick, made for horror fans, by horror fans, with no attempts to try and pander to the general public.
I won't lie to you - the torture scenes are pretty goddamn gnarly, and in a couple of places even downright disgusting, but in truth they only make up a very small portion of the film, and the picture has a lot more going for it than just blood and guts. For starters, characters are all pretty likable; I felt actually concerned for them, which is more than can be said for 99% of horror movies post-1980. The scares don't come as much from single, individual acts of torture and depravity, but from an overall feeling of dread of being a million miles from home, in a European village where everyone is in cahoots and is against you. If anything, it belongs with Deliverence in the subgenre of "Vacation Gone Wrong" movies...the kind of fear that I'm sure everyone has experienced at least a little of when they've taken a trip for some R n' R.
I saw this in a theater full of teenagers, and I for one really like horror movies with an audience because I get a kick out of the shared reaction. The girls screeched and ewwed in all the appropriate places, and when the villains got their blood-soaked comeuppance at the end, there were actually cheers. Of course, my horse!