Torturing idiots

Rating: 1/10 (3 August 2007)

What's up with horror movies today? Either they are wimpy, toothless stuff or they rely only on violence, forgetting character development, pacing and other essential elements of the genre. Both extremes stink: Hostel falls squarely in the latter group.
Three sex-starved friends reach a town in Eastern Europe and meet a group of attractive, suspiciously friendly local girls. One after another the friends disappear, only to wake up in a dark room tied to a chair.
Torture is not interesting - and it's not scary or entertaining, just unpleasant. What's sad is the idea beneath Hostel had potential. Every time one of the protagonists vanishes there are intriguing bits with a creepy atmosphere and the growing realization something horrible is happening.
Hostel features also an attempt at subtext about the comparison between sexual tourism and "torture tourism" by sadists who pay the hostel to bring them victims. But the movie squanders mood and social commentary and goes for cheap, gratuitous gore. The unnecessarily long first act is a crass teen comedy, the last part essentially plays as a snuff movie - "tonally inconsistent" doesn't quite convey it.
Worth no viewings.
1/10