Extreme disappointment

Rating: 3/10 (27 January 2007)

I have a select group of friends who's opinions on horror/gore films i value highly. this group of friends found this movie to be very entertaining and very brutal. so naturally, when i BOUGHT this film, i had high expectations going into watching it. and i must say, i was not impressed.
For starters, the acting is god awful. Like, these actors aren't even trying. The only credible acting scene in the entire movie is when Josh wakes up chained to the chair in the torture room, and starts freaking out because he has absolutely no idea what is going on. i felt he did a terrific job in that scene showing true fear when you are trapped and unaware of what is happening around you. However, other than that, everyone's acting is sub-par, even by horror movie standards.
The movie also has no plot. i remember reading somewhere that Eli Roth was trying to display through this movie America's ignorance of the outside world. So what, are you telling me that everywhere i go outside of America i should watch out or else i'll be drugged, kidnapped, and brought to a warehouse where someone will pay money to torture and kill me? it makes no sense. i wouldn't doubt that something like this actually does exist in the world. there are some truly sick people walking this planet. but this "business" seemed a little too high profile (complete with business cards, a ticket booth, and tattoos for all their customers) for the general public in the surrounding towns to not know about it. Nothing is really explained, nor does it get tied together.
I'm not even sure if I would say this movie was brutal. Maybe my standards are getting too high when it comes to gore in movies nowadays, but i did not cringe or jump once in this film. sure it had it's moments (like Kana getting burned), but so much more could have been done with the tortures that it left much to my imagination.
And that may have been the downfall of this movie for me. I don't mind a horror film if it has minimal violence, so long as there is a gripping and suspenseful storyline. and vice-versa, if you make a film that's strictly supposed to be disturbing and grotesque, by all means as long as it's done well. HOSTEL had too little of both. there practically was no plot to this movie, i wasn't given a reason to care about the victims, and there wasn't enough brutality to make up for it. The only positives of this movie was, like i said, that one scene where Josh first wakes up and discovers he's been kidnapped, and also the movie had more than it's needed share of hot naked women prancing around. totally not worth buying.