Hostel: Strangeland meets Saw.

Rating: 7/10 (2 March 2006)

At the start of the movie, my first impression was another corny teen movie. I was right, to an extent. Some parts are corny, however, some are extremely suspenseful. It starts out with a group of three pot smoking friends on a vacation in Amsterdam hoping to get stoned out of their minds and sleep with lots of European girls. Typical and overused, yes, but it worked. Unfortunately, this scenario plays out for almost half the movie. My friend told me about this movie and summarized it as "lots of boobs, and lots of gore", and he was dead on. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy seeing a boob here and there, but come on, let's do it in moderation, OK? The nudity was excessive, and it felt like it was only there for the ratings. They could left out 95% of the nudity and still kept the viewers perfectly happy. As for the gore -- Hostel wouldn't be Hostel without it. There's no problem there. This is a movie that WILL make you cringe.. and it's a movie that WILL make you fold up into the fetus position. But it won't scare you. Hostel was much more of a thriller than a horror.
As for the acting.. everyone did a good job, with the exception of a few scenes. Everyone was convincing for the most part, even the "only hired because they were hot" European girls. Since I compared this movie to Saw in my summary, let me just say the acting was a thousand times better than in Saw. Don't worry about that.
All in all, I enjoyed this movie. But it definitely isn't something I'd buy. It kept my attention, it was very suspenseful at times, and the story was straight forward and believable. It just didn't have the spark. Metaphorically speaking, this is just another notch in the belt in terms of recent horror/thrillers.
I give it a generous 7 out of 10 stars.
Don't take your kids to this movie.