This wild, ambitious, horror film premise is not for all tastes.

Rating: 8/10 (14 August 2006)

Two life long American buddies (Jay Hernandez & Derek Richardson) and their new found foreign friend (Eythor Gudjonsson) are traveling through Europe by backpacking. Later they find themselves seduced by attractive ladies at a Hostel and then lured by becoming victims in a cruel game. Which is a Murder for Profit business by killing travelers from any nationality at any price.
Directed by Eli Roth (Cabin Fever) made an entertaining, sick, twisted horror movie with clever touches of dark humour. Roth's scenes of torture are surprisingly effective and the film is gratuitous violent. Which Roth is never seems to be ashame of. The director handle himself better as a filmmaker than he did on his previous first picture (Which is of course "Cabin Fever"). The film actually takes its time by getting to know the characters before getting into the story of this movie. Which is a good for a horror film, especially these days.
DVD has an fine anamorphic Widescreen (2.35:1) transfer and an good-Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. Like Roth's previous movie on DVD, the director appears in all four commentary tracks! Which one of them is a solo commentary track by the director. Commentary two is the director and the executive producers:Boaz Yakin (Remember the Titans), Scott Spiegel (Co-Writer of "Evil Dead 2:Dead by Dawn") & Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill Vol.1 & Vol.2, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs). Commentary three is by the director, Producer:Chris Briggs and documentary filmmaker:Gabriel Roth. Commentary four is also by the director, film editor:George Folsey Jr. (National Lampoon's Animal House, The Blues Brothers), Harry Knowles of AintItCoolNews.com, actor:Eython Gudjonsson and actress:Barbara Nedeljakova. Which the all four commentary are all entertaining and worth checking out.
DVD also has three part excellent featurette titled "Hostel:Dissected" by director's brother:Gabriel. Which is entertaining and gives you the behind the scenes tour of this film. Also the DVD has an multi-angle interactive feature of the infamous "Kill the Car!" sequence. Which is basically long takes from different camera set-ups. Seeing the street kids destroying the car is amusing, depending from which angle to choose from. The two things are missing from this DVD is the original theatrical trailer and deleted scenes. The original darker ending was mention in the commentaries and also briefly seen in the three part featurette. This low budget film has good production values with great locations, terrific score by Nathan Barr (Club Dread, Dukes of Hazzard, Super Troopers) and gory make-up effects by Gregory Nicotero & Oscar-Winner:Howard Berger. Roth is actually working on a sequel. I think it will be difficult to imagine a sequel to this flawed but unique movie. But who knows, maybe writer/director Roth could surprised us. Super 35. (*** ½/*****).