A good start, but not enough narrative flesh

Rating: 5/10 (13 January 2006)

Hostel is filled with a lot of great gore and some OK violence, but it lacks the awesome narrative character building that movies like Evil Dead II, Texas Chainsaw and Halloween have. Yes, the director has a great eye for creating gut wrenching sequences when he finally gets to them, but like other modern horror directors Mr. Roth seems to pay too much attention to effects and fails to create truly horrifying story. Without giving too much of the movie away, I will attempt to explain what I mean. For starters the opening before the gore was much too drawn out. Mr. Roth could have summed most of the opening up in back-story learned when they reach the hostel. The intro might have been more effective and moving if Mr. Roth had focused on the the main characters childhood experience with death and failure. Anyway, with the length of the intro decreased there would have been more time for the meat of the movie to commence. I would have liked to see more character development in the main character, i.e. something more dramatic than what actually occurred in the movie-- wouldn't't it have been more fun if he had started to lose control and go psycho a little sooner than in the last set of scenes in the bathroom! Take for example Ash's character transforming from college lover to insane villain and finally to the 'most' awesome evil butt kicker of horror movie history (except for maybe the father in Exorcist). Hostel has great bloody messes but they are smashed at the end of a narrative that could have been much more terrifying. Gore is great but give me a movie that scares the ever living crap out of me so that I can't sleep at night and I am afraid to look into dark corners a man with no emotions crashing through my closet door bent on killing for no reason is much more horrific than the best special effects gore with a weak and slow plot. Hostel seemed more like a second draft to me rather than a polished final print.