Quite good surprisingly!

Rating: 7/10 (17 January 2006)

Let me pre-empt this by saying that I was in no hurry to see this movie. I hated Roths previous flick, Cabin Fever - unlikable characters, poor script and not much horror. I decided to watch Hostel really only because there was nothing else I wanted to see at the theater, plus some of the hype probably got to me as well....
That being said, I think the hype (and marketing) they created is somewhat of a downfall to the reviews I have read here. This movie does not do well to the general public. People disgusted, walking out of the theater, too much nudity, too much gore. Well, really what were they expecting? I believe if this had been shown in a smaller number of theaters, with little or no publicity, it would be an underground hit, garnishing more good reviews by the horror fan base.
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Anyway, I thought that I'd add my two cents worth. As other reviews have testimented, this really is a movie of two halves. The first being a Eurotrip kinda sex n' drugs road trip, introducing the characters and the foreign soil. The second is a frightening glimpse of sadism and retribution. However really it should be seen as having three parts...the last being a revenge piece.
So, the first part bring the audience 3 happy-go-lucky guys, 2 American and 1 Icelandic traveling in Europe in the search of girls to hump and dump. This section has a few laughs and lots of nudity. One thing is that Roth seems to be looking for a realistic feel to this movie, but all the girls (naked most of the time!) are super hot model types. I guess this is pandering to the target audience (also see Cabin Fever), but doesn't exactly help the realism.
Lets move on to the real meat and bones of the movie.....The guys do not realize that they have fallen into a "honey trap" and the girls that they meet in the titular Hostel are selling them into torture and death. A lot has been said of the torture scenes - I personally didn't find them shocking, but they were effective. What is really scary is that I'm sure this does go on in places in the world, and the movie's premise is feasible. Our villains of the piece are frightening as they appear so ordinary. They do not have super powers, return to life after being killed or any of the other horror clichÃ©s. They range from the creep on the train to the local police and the feeling of helplessness of being somewhere where nobody will come to your aid is palpable.
Once the torture is out of the way, it changes to a revenge flick where the protagonist gets back at the people who hurt him and killed his friends.
Let me first tell you some of the issues I had with this flick -
We do not see what happened to the "King of Swing" - just that he was dead - a missed opportunity I think. Too long of a build up - the first section could have been trimmed without losing any building of the characters. The pack of kids seemed like an afterthought, and didn't really fit in. Too many coincidences when the lead is getting his revenge - the American guy torturing the Asian girl is the one he met, having the 2 girls and the guy they met in Amsterdam standing in front of his car and finally meeting the guy on the train again.
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Overall I think this is a massive step up for Roth and I may actually be excited to see his next movie. His writing and directing have both improved. This movie is not really that shocking to anyone who has an affinity to horror's, but it does have a lasting effect. It's one of those movies that gets better the more you think of it, after you have seen the movie.
I also want to reply to some of the comments I have read about this swing towards torture scenes in movies and how terrible it is...... there have been torture scenes in many, many movies throughout the years. It's nothing new - for example (off the top of my head) mainstream movies such as Pulp Fiction, Rambo, The Passion of the Christ (which has much more brutal and more detailed scenes), Payback, Casino, Goodfellas, The Marathon Man, Brazil, Robocop, Scarface to name but a few. And none of those are classed as horror movies!!