A good time.

Rating: 7/10 (4 June 2007)

As many people would like to believe, That Hostel was just a skin and torture exploitation film, I have these things to say. Hostel is the perfect horror movie, not because of some sick twisted, perverse and demented fantasy that is buried somewhere deep in my brain, but because it actually sacred me to the point of wanting to cry. Many regard all horror films the same way they would regard most soft core porn, as all the same. A slight plot an inevitable ending and a sense that as the story closes that you knew everything that was going to happen before it did. The ending is logical and everyone knew that someone was getting laid. With most horror films there is a protagonist that has in some way a purpose, i.e. a satanic ritual that needs to have ten blond virgins blood, a crazy man has been infected by the soul of a long dead serial killer. Someone is going to kill, torment, or bring violence to someone in the movie based upon a set of criteria. Someone wants to kill someone else for some reason. That is not true of Hostel, and the reason it frightened me so much.
In the movie three friends travel to the Slovakian border and look for a good time filled with weed, women, and as much booze as they can drink. They find such a place in an upscale hostel, and enjoy themselves. This is the part many like to mention as the skin flick part, where are unsuspecting trio offers themselves to a gaggle of exciting new women who they enjoy very much. But all this dose is set up the remainder of the story. When we sat down in the theater when we put in our DVD, we all knew that each of the main characters or at least some were going to be tortured to death in some horrible and unimaginable way that would be shown to us in full color on our own t.v.'s or brought in front by the miracle of cellulose photography. It was intentional to set us up, to remind us that each of these young people was going to meet some horrible end, and to set us up for the remainder of the movie. It takes a long time to get to the torture and I felt almost expectant, every corner every turn having some unspeakable evil waiting around it, hiding in the shadows, waiting to strike. The atmosphere ready we are invited to take pleasure in their deaths by their captors or to sympathize with their plight. The thing I think that destroyed this movie for so many people was that there was no reason for killing them, just because some sick old men wanted to. People who kill others in the world don't necessarily do it with purpose in mind and the most brutal people on the planet are remembered as the ones who took the most pleasure out of others deaths simply because they were there. If people would own up to the idea that this is not so far fetched as Saw, or as real as Wolf Creek I think more people would enjoy this movie for its suspense its tension, and its horrific premise that there are those willing to do anything for a good time.