Fairly Effective Horror film with a Realistic Premise

Rating: 7/10 (25 May 2006)

This is an insinuatingly effective horror whose premise quietly creeps up you and really hits you after seeing it. It is gory but unlike films like Hellraiser or the innumerable Holloween and Friday 13th films, it doesn't veer off into the supernatural and unrealistic gore. The idea that wealthy sadists pay enormous amounts of money to practice freely their sickest fantasies in countries, in this case in Eastern Europe, poor and desperate enough to accept such money and turn a blind eye to what happens to the victims of these people isn't as off the wall as people would like to believe. With real life horrors like Darfur, Bosnia, Cambodia, the Holocaust, is it so implausible that such a torture pit as shown in this film could exist? Unfortunately, I don't think so.