A journey into what is possible....

Rating: 10/10 (13 July 2006)

It is certainly possible to see why some people were put off by the tits'n'arse quotient a the start of this film, subsequently writing it off as another stupid American horror cliché. However, I can honestly say that the first half or more of the movie was SUPERBLY bland, thus making it all the more realistic when confusion sets into the Backpackers hostel when people start to disappear. The sex, drugs and clubbing might be a caricature of people's travelling lives, but believe me, it is certainly accurate in describing some.
What makes this film truly great, is that it doesn't resort to ridiculous plot twists or any other particularly obvious horror stupidity to draw the audience in. It simply wends its way along, with the path of events gradually becoming clearer in a quite natural way. There were very few elements of the whole thing that I thought were just movie rubbish that could not possibly happen.
***Big Spoilers***
This counts double for the central tenet - rich sadists paying to torture and kill people any way that they please. You can say that this is not likely to happen in the world, but you probably would not say that it isn't possible. This is horror at it's base - trying to find the common denominator of fear lurking in the backs of our minds. Torture must be high on the list for most people, but this isn't the middle ages any more. Suddenly we have a realistic enough premise to bring these fears back into focus. And what is worse, the protagonists are simply normal, paying customers - not drooling, cartoonish, shadowy evils. When you see the Japanese girl having her eye blowtorched, and the matter of fact way that the American goes about it, you finally realise that the film makers have touched on TRUE HORROR - that which is inside the minds of everyday people, given vent.
Best film I have seen for a long time - one that is brilliant for it's simplicity.