buckets of blood added to snoring action plot line

Rating: 6/10 (21 April 2006)

Well, the director really stands out on a limb in this one...a limb on the end of a bloody stump, that is! Contemporary horror artist's seem to by trying desperately to recapture the singular sensation engendered by Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which, when compared to Tobe Hooper's other films, seems to be a masterful fluke if you ask me. Something which is stumbled upon, like a diamond sitting in the dirt, and cannot be achieved again.
We've had "Tension", "Wolf Creek" and now "Hostel". And inspecting the whole process here, it's hard to figure out why these films fail by comparison...but they do. Sure, I winced during some of the more grisly scenes, but the primal horror I felt during TCM was nowhere in sight. The sadism in TCM was far more brutal and alien. The victims were reduced to absolute and sheer panic without a shred of composure left to them...which is what blind, insatiable sadism wants....blind and insatiable fear. The victims in the most recent horror films still maintained an element of heroism (the final twist in Tension was kind of a cop-out if you ask me...like the writer was retracing his steps to cover up a stalling plot line). All this says to me is that the writer and director seem unwilling to cross the line into true horror and opted to save a shred of hope for their audience...which may be satisfying on one level...and yet, we all still compare them to the shrieking nightmare of TCM, shake our heads and wonder what happened to the good olÃ© days.