I don't get the hype

Rating: 2/10 (7 September 2007)

When this first came out, I never thought that I'd sit through it in a million years. I'm nowhere near a gore hound, and would prefer psychological thrillers to any sort of outright "torture porn". Although I had this in mind, I eventually grew more interested in seeing it, hearing that it was absolutely terrifying and utterly disturbing. I was curious, so when I saw that it was on Showtime one night, I decided to sit through it.
Boy, was I stupid.
In general, it's a poor film. At first thought, the most blatant mistake that Roth makes is his characterization. If you're going to make a film specifically about torture and you're trying to make your audience sympathize with the victims, the worst thing to do is make them seem like completely stupid and shallow frat boys from the first moment. If the audience is sympathizing with the predators instead of the prey because they prey are such frustrating and silly characters, your film's not gonna be effective.
Secondly, I won't deny that the plot's idea is frightening. The execution, however, is not so much. The torture is more silly than frightening (I'm sorry, but I had to laugh when the Asian girl's eye was hanging out. With a budget that large, there is no reason for visual effects to be THAT excessively cheesy), and it is much too amateurish to be disturbing. The acting was just made up of a ton of simple screaming, making even something as nasty sounding as a slit Achilles tendon seem dumb.
Now, don't get me wrong. There were one or two genuinely creepy moments, the only one coming to mind as when Jay Hernandez's character is in the locker room talking to a man, who is freakishly excited, getting ready to go in and torture someone. That, I thought, was a good, effective way to actually make the plot seem frightening and present. Everything else, however, doesn't do near the same job.
People, fans of the genre, have told me that if I could handle "Hostel", I could handle anything. After seeing it, I am now genuinely scared of the state of modern horror. If this is the epitome of terror in modern cinema, then I don't want to know what the future holds for the genre...