Beats "Battle Royale" where intelligence is concerned.

Rating: 9/10 (1 September 2008)

First of all, let me say that contrary to what reviews are stating, this is possibly one of the most intelligent horror movies out there. While foreign horror movies like Frontier(s) get perfect ratings because of they're not the norm here in America, thus SEEMING superior, they lack the intelligence that this lower rated movie had.
Hostel is essentially a parable. The movie is divided into equal 45-minute halves that both parallel in every way, except they have different subjects: sex and violence. From the scenery to the events, they're pretty much a mirror imagejust reversed. I'll talk about both.
Sex People complain about (or enjoy) the nudity, calling it semi-porn. Being someone who really doesn't like nudity in films, I can say that it isn't quite up to porn level because it simply pretends to be porn. You can decide for yourself if that justifies it as being porn or not, BUT, Hostel uses nudity for a reason. I think one of the strongest things the film has going for it was to back up the point that all naked women are the same. Porn, your wife, some whore, your daughter . . . all the same. It showed that amazingly well through the nudity. I think I was most impressed that it used the nudity for a reason, unlike other movies.
Violence Whoever says this is more violent than any of the Saw movies, please tell me you're joking. It roughly is just about as violent as the first Saw, but after that the Saw franchise makes this look babyish. There are cut-off scenes, scenes that simply show NONE of the gore on screen, scenes where it doesn't show the graphic details. In no way shape or form way this pushing gore on screen. If they took out about a minute more of it, I'd honestly say it could have gotten a hard PG-13 because it uses PG-13 strategies to try NOT to show the gore. But intelligently, it uses the violence to mirror the sex and make its point.
Overall, it had a trite, almost cute, way to wrap the entire movie up. "I got some pussy the other day, but I don't even remember what color her tits were, man. But THIS, this I'll remember forever." When given the opportunity, violence replaces sex.
I've seen a lot of movies that pretend to be smart. No Country For Old Men was one of them. But those kinds of movies aren't smart simply because they lack anything new to saythey repeat trite clichés. Death, love, blah, blah, blah. And though Hostel lacks any kind of a plot twist, I think the major twist was that it DID have something original to say about the correlation between sex and violence. It said something about human nature I've never heard before.
In the end, it feels almost like Saw's brother. They're utterly different but somehow linked by similar gore and their morals. I'd take this over yet another tired old man movie that thinks it's so intelligent but just repeated a cliché, like There Will Be Blood, any day.
9/10