Eurotrash'd OR: How The Gimp Spent His Summer European Vacation

Rating: 6/10 (9 January 2006)

HOSTEL (2006) ** Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, Eythor Gudjonsson, Barbara Nedeljakova, Jana Kaderabkova, Jan Vlasak, Jennifer Lim, Lubomir Silhavecky, Paula Wild, Lubomir Bukovy, Rick Hoffman.
Eurotrash'd.
Filmmaker Eli Roth is making a noble attempt to rescue the horror genre that he so adores and in his sophomore go he succeeds just-a-bit more than his debut with the overwrought and undercooked "Cabin Fever", its Cravian flesh-eating virus in the boonies misfire.
In "Hostel" a trio of horny college students traveling abroad in Europe are looking for cheap thrills in Amsterdam's state of debauchery by imbibing with as much hash and whores as possible until they get derailed in a stop-over in Slovakia where they are informed the women there are undeniably hot and bothered and the illicit means of getting trashed are theirs for the taking.
The three buddies - two Americans, Pax and Josh (Hernandez and Richardson, respectively) and an Icelandic self-proclaimed 'king of swing' Oli (Gudjonsson) - find the hostel and more than they bargained for: two hotties (Nedeljakova and Kaderabkova) sharing their room (and bodily fluids before the night is over). The next morning Oli is nowhere to be found and after several cell phone calls get a few messages of their bud high-tailing it with no explanation.
Along the way they encountered an odd Danish businessman (Vlasak) whose clumsy pass at Josh infuriated the young man to no end but the two meet again unlikely at the local watering hole and deciding to make international peace Josh buys the Dane a drink and some words of advice. The next thing he knows it, Josh is bound in his underwear to a hard chair in a dank dungeon and his drinking buddy with a tray of sharp surgical equipment glittering sinisterly nearby.
What follows is a nauseating display of carnage and torture but frankly not as gore-iffic as I anticipated with the hyperbole that the film was offered in its ads and the fact that none-other-than Quentin Tarantino as an executive producer glad-handling the media declaring this to be the scariest, sickest violent infused fest in a decade or so. I'm no prude but I think Roth skimped out on the Gran Guignol this could've been and without sounding sadomasochistic I like my gore to be buckets of, not a sponge job.
The scares that fail to come are largely due to Roth's build up (finally) after nearly a half hour of lead up with unlikable characters whose sympathy we're supposed to gather by the time they meet their fates with grisly results when in fact the punches are indeed pulled. I admit the last fifteen minutes make up for the lack of ghoulish could've beens with gusto and self-righteous "yeah" paybacks but the trip itself is unsavory. While the sex scenes are plentiful (thanks Eli!) and the subversive comic relief in the grotty hamlet's gang of pre- pubescent street gang as some ersatz "Village of the Damned" is highly welcomed (finally also that the 'hot' babes are indeed well-endowed and hot) the film feels compromised of what if promises to deliver: shock. In fact if feels like a glimpse of The Gimp sequence from Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" (several scenes feel cribbed from this and could best describe the film as a whole). Nothing is shocking really when you already know that the results will be nasty "Saw" - like environs, Eurotrash baddies and a few well-shot sequences of tension (the one true gross-out ocular venture's money shot is indeed not for the squeamish), however Roth has a lot more to make up for in his shortcomings, namely one character we can totally relate to and support in his hellish nightmare. Otherwise it is a somewhat gallant attempt to do what Sam Raimi, John Carpenter and others have pioneered in the late Seventies and early Eighties: horror with heart.