Eli Roth should be ashamed of himself

Rating: 1/10 (27 March 2006)

I saw Cabin Fever. I hated it. I went to see Hostel not knowing it was an Eli Roth film, and the second that I saw his name on the screen, I KNEW it would be bad. I didn't know it was worse than Cabin Fever. Save for the eye-snipping scene, most of the horrible parts were shown in the trailer. The plot points were so ridiculously weak and ill-conceived. There was little driving force to the film, just lots of horrible drawn-out parts that replaced substance with nudity. Seriously, when a film has to distract me from its plot with naked chicks, it's pretty bad. And I have seen MANY MANY horror films- I KNOW that sex and nudity are very common. However, this movie wasn't trying to be a "bad" horror film (as in so bad it's good- and if it was, it missed by a long shot)- it was meant to be seriously disturbing. But I kept finding that instead of being led down the dark path, breasts were thrown in my face to "confuse me" or "throw me off", meaning to be a disruption to the tension but only served as a cheap ploy to show more mindless nudity.
OK, after the nudity (which, by the way, would have been just fine had the rest of the film been worthwhile AT ALL). I can't think of anything more predictable than the outline for this movie, of "who is going to die next/when is that person/plot point going to resurface at JUST the right moment?" I could make out basically every connection. That does not build a suspenseful film, other than the suspense built by the hope that the movie would somehow magically get better. Additionally, the driving force behind this concept was just idiotic. I liked how it sounded in the trailer, but once I learned of the whole scheme where an entire nation was supporting this gruesomeness, I had to laugh. And stop myself from getting sick all over the person next to me- not because I was horrified by the gore, but because I was horrified that Eli Roth was allowed to make another one of his movies, and that I was lured in by the "Quentin Tarantino presents" tag, which has now made me lose respect for Tarantino because he helped finance this atrocity.
If you are looking for suspense, horror, and mystery of any sort, do yourself a favour and rent something else. This film was so unimpressive that I can barely remember the "scary" elements after only a few months.