Terrifyingly Awful or Awfully Terrifying

Rating: 4/10 (2 March 2013)

The premise of all three Hostel movies is rather absurd. The gore is over the top and at times it seems medically inaccurate. They build on the classic slasher film formula and through the use of ball gags and fetish suits, become fantastic examples of torture porn. If you accept the fact that its all just a story, I suppose the film can be thought of as frightening. The idea of such a powerful institution created for the sole purpose of catering to the needs of sadists and psychopaths is a spooky one, but a series of B rate performances and C rate characters makes the story difficult to sell. The Hostel movies do nothing new with the horror genre, the idea is fantastic, though so much so that we have to acknowledge how ridiculous it is. A good fright, but there are so many better movies in the horror genre, if you consider yourself a fan. Watch these movies when you have plenty of popcorn and nothing to do.