Mr. Roth, I know you can do better than this...

Rating: 4/10 (14 January 2006)

I just came back from seeing this film and, surprisingly, I left the theater with the same numbness I felt when I saw the Passion of the Christ. Only this time, part of my tranquility was due to the fact that I was stunned that Hollywood has now stooped so low to make a movie like Hostel. If you are expecting something extremely gory and twisted, go see it. However, if you actually want a decent plot without a 95 minute nightmarish feel to it, go see something else.
The thing is, we all have our own disgusting, torture-filled imaginations that could fill up numerous pages of a script. The real hard part is finding a way to weave them into a good storyline, not just chuck a bunch of blood and gore at the screen and call it a movie.
I thought Cabin Fever was a great movie, very smart and original. Hostel, however, is like Eli Roth and Quentin Tarantino getting together in front of a computer trying to play a game of "who can out-gross whom." There's no doubt that you won't be able to get some of the images out of your head and will probably talk about them for a couple of days. But Hostel is doomed to fade away into another gore-infested film that only 13 year old boys watch with their girlfriends to ensure that the girls will cuddle up with them when the torture begins.