Hmm… Where to start? Is Hostel what I expected? Yeah, kind of. Did it exceed my expectations? No, not really. How was the gore? Pretty good, two or three really awesome and really gross scenes. Is it scary? It was scarier than pretty much everything else I’ve seen in the last few months. So, is it any good? Yeah, it’s quite good actually. Then why do I sound a little…disappointed? Because I’ve been excited about this movie since I heard about it a really long time ago. Because the movie had awesome buzz. Because I was expecting something that would change the face of horror forever. I blame the internet and Quentin Tarantino for these unrealistic expectations that marred my judgment of the movie.

But as I said before, the movie is good. Scary, gory, and funny; my favorite combination. Eli Roth is a talented man, and the thing I like most about him is that he really seems to enjoy what he’s doing. He has a vision, and love it or hate it, you’ve got to respect the guy for it.

I’m pissed that so many reviews have given away so much of this movie. The best way to see it would be to know nothing about it beforehand. If you must know anything, I’ll tell you the basic premise. Two American guys that have just graduated college decide to backpack through Europe before they have any real responsibilities. Along with them is an Icelandic guy that they met in Paris. These men have a mission: get wasted and get laid.

One of the Americans, Josh, is actually not a bad guy. He wants to go to museums, but his friends just laugh at him. Paxton, played by my boyfriend Jay Hernandez, is a douche bag. Interesting, then, that he is the character followed most throughout the movie. It’s the opposite of what most directors would have done, but I liked it. Oli is from Iceland, and he acts like a horny teenager. There’s not much more to him, nor should there be.

The boys are getting wasted in Amsterdam when they meet a guy that suggests they go to a Slovakian city that has more naked women than any of the boys can handle. They head to a hostel that looks more like a four star hotel, complete with a spa. Everything is even better than they expected. They haven’t been at the hostel for more than ten minutes, and they’re hanging out with naked girls in a sauna. They’ve found paradise.

And then, as I’m sure most of you already know, we find out that nothing that good can be true. There’s a catch, and boy, it’s a big one.

The last half of the movie deals with the aforementioned catch, and it’s really something to watch. It won’t be the goriest thing you’ve ever seen, I’m sure, but there will be some scenes that make you squirm. If you’re an avid Horrorwatcher, you may remember a thread about the most disturbing violence/death scenes that we had ever seen. I happened to mention a particular scene from Pet Sematary. I change my vote. Roth seems to know exactly what disturbs me, and I’m sure many others, the most.

I liked the first half of the movie as well, it set the scene very well, and it helps to relax the audience so that when things change, it catches us off guard. We’re having fun with these guys, so the last half is even more frightening. Everything is gratuitous, as everything should be in a horror movie. You like boobs and gore? You’ll get them in spades here. It’s really refreshing to watch a horror movie that isn’t anything like the recent trend of PG-13 big budget “horror.”

If I have any qualm with the movie, it’s that I constantly wanted more. Everything was very good, but not great. I would have loved for the last half of the movie to be longer. It just seemed that once we got to the really good stuff, it was over too fast.

This is a much different movie than Cabin Fever, Roth’s first movie. Still, if you like Cabin Fever you’ll most likely enjoy this as well. The good thing is, however, that if you hated Cabin Fever there’s still a good chance that you’ll like Hostel. I, for one, loved Cabin Fever. I’ve watched it many times, and I’m not ready to say that I like Hostel as much. However, the first time I saw Cabin Fever I was a little unimpressed, so maybe if I see Hostel a few more times I will completely change my mind.

Again, Hostel is a good movie. Just get it out of your head now, though, that it’s going to be the best thing you’ve ever seen. When you have so much expectation, it causes you to find faults that you wouldn’t even notice otherwise. It is the best thing to come out in awhile, and if you’re a horror fan you should see it, no question.

7.8 out of 10 awesome Takashi Miike cameos

I've just gotten back from watching Hostel, and I have to say at least this on Eli Roth's behalf - he's growing up as a director. This was alot more fun to watch than Cabin Fever in my opinion, and the last 45 minutes of Hostel are actually done pretty well, but the first half of the movie started to bore me.

I'm all for beautiful women nude (and there were tons of 10 out of 10s), and I'm all for some immature buddy's out looking for as much fun as possible (we've probably all done that at least once), but it all kind of seemed like filler to me.

It built up to the events in the last half of the film, just not as good as it could have. No cool quotes, and nothing a man my age hasn't seen a thousand times before.

All that aside, the last half started to really look like a horror movie, everything seemed darker (even the same women looked different - which I thought was a GREAT touch), and the gore fire hose got plugged into the city block gore hydrant and got sprayed right in the audience's faces. Although, I think some of it cheapened the movie. I actually think the movie would have turned out ALOT better without some of it!

Perhaps I shouldn't be looking for something Hitchcock-esque from Eli Roth though.

So all-in-all, I thought this was a pretty good movie compared to alot of the horror movies as of late (SAWs excluded). If I were still 16, then this movie would get 11 out of 10, but I'm 26 so...

6.2 out of 10 old guys who want to feel closer to their meat

Hostel probably is one of the scariest flicks you’ll ever see. The reality of it or the possibility of it’s reality push it beyond most horror films, even the realistic ones. The truth is it all came down to being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and often that is all it takes. Really, really horrible things often happen to people just because they’re near the person looking to do something horrible to someone. Everyone’s a victim under the right circumstances.

This movie will appeal to Americans more than most cultures, it’s really perfect for us. We’re a xenophobic and paranoid culture, and at the same time we feel a false sense of security at the most inappropriate times. It’s who we are. This is movie plays into all that so well, it’s more disturbing than the torture is, for me.

And let’s talk about that. I love torture in movies, if you tell me there’s a movie where people are tortured to death, I want to see it. I dunno why, I’m not sadistic, I can’t bear to hurt anything. Last year I helped save a dog that had been shot, and his whine when I lifted him into my car upset me. I don’t like or want to hurt anyone or anything.

But if you got a flick where a busty babe is going to be tortured in a South American Jail or a concentration camp or anywhere else, I’ve probably either seen it or would like to. She’ll kick their ass for it in the end, I bet.

However, that’s exploitation torture, which is much like exploitation rape. It’s not the same. The rape scene in The Accused is really disturbing to me, I have no urge to ever see any part of that movie again, however if you take the rape scene from an exploitation flick, not so much. The rapist is usually really dorky and the victim is often only mildly annoyed. They often say things in a flat tone like “darn you, I don’t like this very much at all!” Of course, the guy rarely even opens his pants, it’s a dry-hump rape.

Anyway, my point being, this isn’t fun torture in Hostel! I didn’t enjoy it, it was harsh, gruesome, and just all-around unpleasant to the viewer. In other words, great horror.

8 out of 10 fingers that weren’t gonna do any damn good anyway

I can’t believe no one has mentioned the song “How Do” by the Sneaker Pimps. It was the song that was playing while the guys were having sex. The song is a remake of “Willow’s Song” from The Wicker Man.

I didn’t expect to like it so I wound up liking it ok, nothing special. I had absolutely no sympathy for any of the characters (except for the Asian girls.) Some random guy tells you to travel to a certain place where you’re guaranteed to get laid by the hottest women ever? So you go? No questions asked? How fucking clueless can you be? European women aren’t generally that fond of Americans. I suppose it says something about our arrogance that the guys wouldn’t think of that. Or maybe I’m giving the movie too much credit.

I would’ve liked more death and less fucking. Come on, you guys know I’m the champion of nudity but even I was way over all the skin. I wish more time had been spent on the “Organization”, the inner workings, the people who ran the place, that kind of thing.

The eyeball thing was cool, the girls being hot then all the sudden being ugly and grimy to match their surroundings was fantastic and I was satisfied with the movie as a whole but it certainly wasn’t what the campaign made it out to be.

6 out of 10 times I was glad none of those street kids busted out some weird Kung Fu.

This was an excellent movie! I can't believe I'm saying this. First, I thought Cabin Fever was a shitfest. Second, there are no zombies or supernatural events. Still, I really enjoyed this movie.

I was really pulled into the movie. I enjoyed the fact that the guy with questionable morals didn't automatically get whacked like so many politically correct movies have done in the past.

Whenever Paxton got his cell phone stolen, and ultimately lost his only connection to anything familiar or helpful, I genuinely felt bad, because you knew doom was impending. The ultimate feeling of isolation. "So far from home" is what I believe the policeman said.

I liked the way the girls went from beautiful party girls to sinister "not so pretty" sirens. An excellent touch.

The gore was awesome and the torture was effective. The triple car homicide was put into the movie for no other reason but to satisfy the viewers vengeance bloodlust. Usually, this type of mechanism can cheapen the movie, but that wasn't the case. Talk about desensitization. How many people cheered out loud when one of the victims got brutally dragged under the car?

I loved the American hunter guy. He was only in the movie briefly, but boy was he entertaining.

Everything has already been touched on by the previous reviews, so I'll wrap this up. Great movie! After watching the movie about 3 times in a week, I sat down one afternoon and watched 2 of the commentaries back to back. This is unprecedented for me for a movie of this type. I give this 9 out of 10 cameos from a man who really knows about torture scenes.