Not a big deal (the first part, at least)

Rating: 3/10 (23 March 2006)

The film splits into two parts, the teenage sex comedy part and the horror part, which is not necessarily a fault. Horror is most effective if it starts in commonplace circumstances, and smoking pot and hunting madly for sex, no matter whether at the native college or with backpack overseas, seems to be commonplace for kids of the age group that was portrayed in the film. (And that is dominating the audience.) I do not admire such behavior but I do not think that because of how the poor kids behave one cannot sympathize with them when they get tortured later. Surely he who confronts his companions with his naked bottom repeatedly for no apparent reason, and calls himself "the king of the swing", should be punished, but chopping off his head is a bit too much. Perhaps it would suffice if his friend, an admirer of Kafka, would read him loudly the first chapter of the novel Amerika. Anyway, maybe a teenage sex comedy really has some potential to serve as a preamble to a horror, as the makers of the film believe. I went to the theater just to see whether this is the case. (In fact, I walked out after the first torture scene and I knew in advance that I will walk out. I do not have stomach for this kind of horror. I like Vertigo but not The Silence of the Lambs.) My general feeling is that the first part of the film is shot loosely, without focus and verve. As if the director thought "I am shooting an indie film, a film for fans (of whom there will be plenty), so why care?". When some suspense appears after all, it seems like it was smuggled into the film by the actors behind the director's back. I am talking about the creepy salad-eater in the train, and the girl with an eloquent smile at the reception desk of the hostel. But not the children gang, please! These well-fed Czech kids, thinking that they will look frightening if they will frown into the camera, were laughable. Perhaps if the film was shot in Slovakia, as the script suggests, and not in Czech republic, it would work better. After all, the opening takes of the horror classic Nosferatu were shot in Orava, a rough but beautiful region of Slovakia near the Slovak-Polish border.