My trip to Europe was more entertaining than this, and I've never even been to Europe

Rating: 4/10 (26 June 2009)

I haven't extensively researched the genesis of Hostel, but after watching it, I can imagine the sole idea that sparked the entire film: "What if there was a brothel that charged patrons for the opportunity to torture and murder people instead of having sex with them?" Very sick stuff, this, and an intriguing idea to boot. Problem is, you have to build a film around an idea to bring it to life. While Hostel has its concept in place, the movie that Eli Roth constructs around this premise is an incoherent mess.
There are so many things wrong with this inexplicably popular gorefest, it's hard to know where to begin. Let's start with our cast of obnoxious frat-boy meat-heads, whose exploits we're supposed to vicariously enjoy, but who are so utterly unlikeable, we're left hoping that they die within the first five minutes. We should also mention the seemingly inhuman ability these characters have to lose eyeballs and fingers throughout the course of the film, but somehow not lose enough blood to induce shock, or even mild discomfort.
I'm not sure if there's a message intended in this film, but the moral I got out of Hostel is that people who live in small European countries are completely insane. They'd pretty much have to be to necessitate an entire industrial complex where a dozen rooms are filled with paying customers inflicting unfathomable tortures upon anonymous flailing victims. While this concept is certainly frightening, I'm a bit more disturbed to find out that in some European locales, bands of unbathed children roam the streets committing acts of murder in exchange for bubble gum. This is not a joke, by the way, but actually a crucial factor in the climax of this wretched offering.
But you probably aren't watching Hostel to see any intelligence on display are you? You're really more interested in seeing grisly fates handed out to these bland, interchangeable characters for no apparent reason, right? Well, you certainly get that here, and if your weapon of choice is the Unrated DVD release, you're going to get plenty of it. Problem is, you have to wait about an hour and sit through roughly 14 soft-core sex scenes to get there. Should you decide to weather the endless barrage of gratuitous nudity (okay, not so bad... I'll give you that) and heavy drinking, you will find out fascinating things about the human body. For instance, did you know that when you cut someone's eyeball out, egg yolk drips down their face? I do now. Thanks, Hostel!
I really don't want to waste too much time talking about a movie that I already squandered 90 dreadful minutes on, so I'm not going to spend many more words discussing this. But I want to at least address the biggest problem with this film before I finish this review and sell back the useless DVD I just finished dirtying my player with.
Though the film eventually turns into an over-the-top Grand Guignol feast of sanguinary delights, the journey there is so long-winded and barren of suspense, most viewers without a penchant for self-loathing will turn this film off before the horror part of our program even gets underway. While there are certainly ample breasts on display during this hour-long road to nowhere, if this is enough for you to justify sitting through the antics of characters whose ability to annoy outshines even the most bravura splatter on display in this film, I really think you should leave your house more often. The light-hearted tone and "look at us talking like normal teenagers" dialogue don't mesh with the brutality that follows, and this juxtaposition doesn't make the torture scenes in this film more scary or powerful, it just confuses what the point of this whole mindless offering really is.
I offer this film a 4 simply because the core concept is a very intriguing one, even if the execution of this concept is so inept that it renders the original idea impotent. A 5 might be a bit more fair, but I had to chop off a point because this film actually features a hunchback wearing medieval chain-mail.
If there's any resolution we get out of Hostel, it's that torture is never pretty. Well, the agonizing process of sitting through this very stupid film is a lot more painful than anything the characters in the movie go through, so exactly why anyone would praise this senseless and artless piece of crap is beyond me. Maybe someone gave them some bubble gum?