See the preview. Skip the movie. (*SPOILERS*, kinda)

Rating: 2/10 (9 January 2006)

Oh, how excited I was to see Hostel. The promise of a good, nasty throwback to the 70s exploitation flicks of yesteryear, the promise of terror and brutality, up there on the big screen, clawing the audience's eyes out while we keep a nice, safe distance, free to shield ourselves and whimper in fear.
Oh, and Quentin Tarantino was involved, so you KNOW it has to be edgy and unique... apparently. And, landie dearie me, folks, the biggest reaction the film got from the audience was when - in one scene - Pulp Fiction happened to be on television. I don't think anyone would have bothered with this movie if the title hadn't been under Tarantino's name in the previews.
Going in to see Hostel I'd already seen Cabin Fever, Eli Roth's first outing into gore/horror/slapstick/whatever cinema, and I loved it. Absolutely loved it. I loved it in that way that any movie that is so damn weird and entertaining deserves to be loved.
Coming out of Hostel I wish I had stayed home and rented Cabin Fever.
I went with two friends... Meg and Alan. Alan is a huge fan of movies in general and Cabin Fever, specifically. Meg hails from Hiroshima, and after a lifetime of Japanese horror flicks she has developed quite an appetite for scary movies. I just like to have a good time.
We were all pretty disappointed.
The first half of Hostel was absurd. For anyone under the age of 14 who really, really, REALLY likes to masturbate, the first hour of Hostel will be bliss, I assure you. I have never seen so much nudity in one sitting (outside of a porno flick, at least) and I cringe to think that I may ever, ever encounter a naked woman ever again in my entire life, because Hostel has pretty much broken me of ever wanting to see that. So, dare I say it, but way too many boobies, kids.
We are handed a few characters and by virtue of the fact that they're on the screen we're expected to care about them. Unfortunately, that doesn't really work and so all we have to get us through this movie are some people on the screen with whom we can't relate and for whom we feel no real attachment. The absurdity of these people and how little it was that we cared about them pretty much boils down to the fact that Alan was far more interested in the loud guy sitting behind him (as was I) and Meg kept asking me what the Japanese characters in the film were saying... because they were speaking gibberish... with incredibly phony and - Meg informed us - incredibly offensive accents: "Tlain... we go to tlain station." Indeed, the Japanese people on the screen didn't sound anything like the Japanese person sitting next to me. I find myself wondering, now, how many European cultures Roth was able to alienate through similar ignorance... there are a LOT of accents in Hostel.
So, after all the sex and boobies and drinking are out of the way, some of the characters get killed, we see some good special effects and some terrible special effects but we really don't care in the least, we sit through a few scenes that are supposed to be tense or humorous or both (but they're just dull) and then the movie ends.
Herein lie the spoilers:
Things I Have Learned From Watching Hostel
1) Women are there for one reason and one reason only: sex. This includes your mothers and sisters... if you can't bang 'em, they're useless to you. Don't forget that.
2) Homosexuality is evil and easily equivocated with brutal torture, much like Haute Tension, in that respect.
3) If you give children gum they will mercilessly kill for you, even though you can't explain to them what you want because you don't speak their language.
4) People really, really, really like to text message during movies... a LOT.
5) It is necessary to operate in absolute secret to seduce and kidnap people to sell them to an underground snuff club, even though every single person for miles around (including the police) are perfectly aware of said underground snuff club, and it really isn't all that secret in the least.
6) If you lose an eye, escape certain death and are on your way to freedom you will commit suicide because at the last moment you discover that you've lost an eye and are - we can only assume - ugly and unfit to live, so you might as well dive in front of the nearest locomotive. This only applies to women, who are only good for sex. Disfigured men can go about their lives as usual.
7) You can sucker audiences into watching anything so long as you hype it enough.
And, with regards to number 7, this seems to be the perfect, PERFECT example of a movie being over-hyped. I have never seen such a packed theater and at the same time I have never seen so many bored viewers. Nothing captivating happens during Hostel, it's impossible to care about the characters and after the first hour of nudity and debauchery, there's no room left to tell a real story. The concept is spectacular, but it wasn't given any room to move.
I was hoping to feel upset or disturbed by Hostel or to at least have something to think about after seeing the movie (the only lingering thought, that quickly faded, was: yeah, Europeans hate Americans... and water is wet, what else you got?). All that I felt, even the next day, was that I better write to the distributor and demand my money back so that I can give it to the guy who was sitting behind Alan... now THAT guy was the real entertainment!