Gore and torture, as promised.

Rating: 7/10 (15 December 2012)

I consider myself a devout Horror fan, and try to watch as many films of the genre as possible and of as many sub-genres as I can. However, I'm not at all a gore fan, and I don't appreciate what people describe as "torture porn". It's simply not what I like to watch.
Therefore, it took me a long while to bring myself to watching Hostel, because of all that's been said about it. There's been a lot of buzz around Hostel and Saw here in Israel, and I absolutely adore the Saw series, so I thought it was about time to give Hostel a try. And it actually wasn't all that bad.
I'd divide Hostel into three parts. First - the build-up. Three friends go backpacking in Europe, enjoying the drugs and ladies, very Eurotrip style without the comedy (except for Oli, who's the comic relief). The second - gore and torture. Some pretty disgusting gore shoots and very disturbing physical torture. Nothing more. The third - the conclusion of the story along with the "I Spit on Your Grave" style vengeance. It might have been an attempt at a happy ending, though it merely showed that the victim became as bad as the antagonists...
All in all, I would recommend this film to anyone who enjoys gore and torture films, as these are the most powerful aspects of it. Personally, as someone who doesn't like gore and torture (have I said gore and torture yet? Well, gore and torture, plenty of it), I could have easily managed without.