Hostel Photo

Hostel

Starring: Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, Eythor Gudjonsson, Barbara Nedeljakova, Jan VlasÃ¡k

Directed by: Eli Roth

RS: 2of 4 Stars

2006

Horror movies have fallen on hard times. Amidst the deluge of pointless remakes (The Hills Have Eyes, etc.), and the greater horrors of a pro-torture Bush regime, Hostel goes with human trafficking as its we-will-shock-you premise. Two horny young American dudes (Jay Hernandez from Friday Night Lights and Dumb and Dumberer's Derek Richardson) are happy ripping bong hits in Amsterdam until a fellow traveler at a hostel tells them about Bratislava: "There is so much pussy, and because of the war there are no guys." So they go. And get trapped in a pay-to-play torture house. Eli Roth's film isn't very clever, but it's got gnarly gore aplenty: see a dopey kid try to walk with severed Achilles tendons, an Asian girl get her eyeball snipped out -- and plenty of Eastern European betties butt-naked, of course. But despite its chilling twist about how the torture house operates, Hostel ultimately plays like a mediocre episode of the Twilight Zone fleshed out to feature length via a bunch of masked men brandishing surgical instruments. Quentin Tarantino liked Hostel enough to endorse it; the Slovakian tourist board is probably less thrilled.