Haha... oh man.

Rating: 6/10 (8 February 2008)

Well, after reading all the negative "lynch mob" press surrounding this movie, I just HAD to watch it in order to see what all the fuss was about. In the typical Yankee style, Europe here is portrayed as a backward continent full of psychos and prostitutes, where the "kick-ass" and cool, cultured American youth can get laid and stoned anytime. First off, contrary to what the movie will have you believe, the weirdo town where the hostel is located is not in Slovakia, but in the Czech Republic (leading me to believe that this picture was made for an American audience, whose knowledge of world geography generally ends somewhere around the border of Canada, at best). Second, Slovakia (or in this case, the Czech Republic) is not really considered Eastern Europe by any reasonable geographical standards. But what the hell... The plot is pretty thin. Two Americans and an Icelander (nice touch of exoticism) can't even get laid in Amsterdam (hahaha), so they head out to some hostel in a small town in Slovakia (ahem), heeding the advice of some Russian stoner they met a minute ago. Yeah, makes perfect sense.
Once there, they hook up with two hot chicks who show them how to drink, party and have sex. Slowly but surely, they also discover the other main cultural attractions of Europe from the American perspective: filth, poverty, horny chicks who all speak English with a Russian accent, kids with sticks and stones wandering around the streets at 2 a.m. looking for tourists whose skulls to bash, and an organized gang of wealthy upper class psychos who pay tens of thousands to torture and kill youngsters for the heck of it. (All this in a run-down, abandoned factory, transformed into an all-out torture center, complete with pit bulls and some shade-wearing, machine-gun wielding bad ass Russian/Ukrainian/Slovakian/who the hell knows anymore- mobsters in black suits and commando boots, acting as security guards. The whole joint is run by some shady Russian (who else?) "Elite Hunter" company/organization, whose members all need to take a nasty looking blood hound tattoo on their arm. Wow. Evil. The innocent victims (who are naturally dumb, dumber and dumbest) are brought in straight from the hostel, which serves as some sort of a central victim-finder-source, with the staff members all affiliated with the "Gang".
Anyway, Yank dude No.1 and Icelander get killed, and Yank dude No.2 makes a heroic escape from torture central, later exacting revenge on the two chicks from the town and the weird Russian stoner from Amsterdam, who fooled him and his buddies into the joint in the first place. Yank dude No.2 runs them over with a car, after coincidentally (and rather conveniently) seeing them standing in the middle of the street not doing anything, probably waiting to be run over by a car driven by angry Yank dude.
I guess this thing could be considered as an attempt at a snuff/porn/horror flick, as some of the torture scenes are pretty gory. And well, in all fairness, there is some amount of suspense every now and then. The escape scene, for instance, is pretty well done.
The main problem here is, that the movie isn't really scary. It's brutal, it's bloody, it's gory - but it's not scary, like a horror flick should be. I even thought, that a few scenes ended up being unintentionally funny. For instance, the bar/cafe scene in the morning, which was intended to be dramatic and a turning point in the film, with the main character finally realizing something's not right. The situation is just too ridiculous to be taken seriously. The two girls are hung over and having beer and the dead serious main character walks in and demands to go to the "art gallery", as the entire bar, packed with some 100-year-olds dressed up like the Gestapo, stare at him angrily.
Anyways, the point is, there are way better horror movies out there. Check out "Tesis" or the original and uncut Japanese version of "The Ring" (the American version isn't bad either), if you don't feel like sleeping for a few weeks.