Ridiculously Over Hyped.

Rating: 3/10 (20 April 2006)

I might get ragged on for not particularly liking this film, but I honestly thought it was way below average. "Hostel" starts off with three male friends vacationing in Europe, one of them being from Poland. The three guys are basically looking for girls and drugs, and Amsterdam is the perfect place for that. From there, they meet a guy who directs them to a youth Hostel in Slovakia, where the girls are apparently willing to do anything. So, the hormone crazed guys head that way. After arriving, they find the girls are great, but after time goes by strange things begin to happen, and after both of his friends go missing, the leader of the group, Paxton, is lead to an old abandoned building by one of the girls from the hostel. From there on, the blood begins to spill, and he discovers that the old abandoned building is used for wealthy businessman who pay to torture and brutally kill innocent travelers, just for the "thrill of it".
Eli Roth does a good job and completely disgusting his audience, there are some pretty brutal torture scenes here, and I will admit it gets pretty nasty. Yet, "Hostel" still felt like your below-average horror film to me, full of cheap nudity and sex, and some intense gore scenes to go along with it. The first 45 minutes of the movie felt like the teenage comedy "Eurotrip", and then it takes a dark turn. Still, this movie was a huge letdown, because the concept is actually really scary. Unfortunately, this movie was a mess. It felt comic at times when brutal things where happening, and made the atmosphere all too unrealistic, and completely unbelievable (an example being the town children attacking the bad guys, come on). For Roth's 2003 horror film, "Cabin Fever", the comic side of it worked, but with "Hostel", the comedy played into it makes it seem way too cheesy, and not serious enough. I was expecting much more, and it turned out to be far below average, despite all of the insane hype that the movie has gotten. I don't understand it.
I guess it just depends what kind of movies you like. "Hostel" is a brutal, gory, movie, with a bunch of nudity and sex, and I felt like I'd seen it all before. It all depends on taste though, and it just wasn't the right movie for me. It wasn't scary, I didn't care at all about the characters, it hardly had any plot at all, it was just disgusting. Had this movie had a much more serious tone and more plot development, it could've been a good movie. But it had neither of those things. If a couple of brainless hours of sex and torture make a good movie for you, then enjoy. For me, this movie failed. 3/10.