Very good (not great, alas)

Rating: 7/10 (11 April 2006)

I think I built this one up too much in my mind. I LOVED Cabin Fever so I was expecting big things from Roth for his second film on a heavier budget. I missed Hostel when it zipped in and out of the theatres and finally got a chance to check it out tonight.
BASIC STORYLINE: Trio of frat guy-ish twenty something's carousing through Amsterdam get wind of a little Eastern European area where the babes flock to Americans like nobody's business. One hostel in particular is a veritable treasure-trove of pu**y, so they're told. Off they go and. Everything about this little country seems great at first. But all is not as it seems.
GREAT premise. GREAT great GREAT. Love it! Any guy who has ever been to college knows about these little European backpacking tours (nudge, nudge) which are basically excuses for dudes to get away from girlfriends/responsibility/real life, etc, so they can party and pick up hot euro chicks chicks and live it up before settling into an actual life. It's a frat guy tradition. For someone to make a horror film that preys upon such hallowed ground is like watching someone spit on your grandmother's grave.
Starts out awesome. The two ugly Americans are accompanied by an equally ugly Icelandic. They smoke hash, insult people, act like rude idiots, have sex with hookers. All that good stuff. The only minor problem in the early part is that these guys may be TOO ugly. But its a minor quibble cause the beginning is great. A creepy, twitchy (which can adequately describe many people in this film) local directs them to the Eastern European hostel. Off they go. Things are still rolling along nicely.
I think the problem starts to set in when they actually get to the hostel. Things there are just like the guy told them. Lots of conveniently available, easy women and so forth. But for me this is where Roth kind of got into trouble. For some reason the air of dread never surfaced. I don't know why, but I actually felt it more when they were still in Amsterdam. Nothing in the town radiated any sense of danger. The roving bands of kids didn't look scary. The girls just looked like a bunch of models. I never felt any palpable menace. The buckets of blood and the gore were fine, but by the end I felt it was just a distraction. I wanted more scares. Gore is great if used well (like in Cabin Fever!) but not when it actually detracts from the sense of menace. I guess I wanted the film to disturb me more than it did. I wanted something that would make me REALLY not want to go to Bratislava.
HOWEVER, I should say that I did enjoy this movie. Quite a lot. I think Roth is an awesome director. I was expecting a great deal from Hostel. Too much, probably. And when you're anticipating a film so much sometimes it just can't live up to your expectations. Some great scares. Definitely a lot of blood and guts. What I actually liked the best was when Roth was more reserved and let the creepy characters take center stage, like the weird Alexi and the freako American near the end. Then the film really came alive for me.