"You could spend all your money in there."

Hostel (2005)
**1/2
Dir: Eli Roth
Starring: Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, Eythor Gudjonsson
MPAA: R

Roth's sophomore feature (following the comic-horror goopfest Cabin Fever) follows a group of fratboy douchebags on their travels through Amsterdam, where they are promised debauchery beyond their capacity to imagine. For the first half-hour or so, that's exactly what they get...a hedonistic tour filled with sex, drugs, and more sex. 

Lest you forget that this is Eli Roth behind the camera, they are soon headed to Slovakia on the promise of even greater bacchanalia, which of course leads to them getting tied to chairs and being gruesomely tortured and (in most cases) murdered. It seems there is a club that has its members pay top dollar to torture and murder unsuspecting tourists. They call themselves a "hunting club", but there doesn't seem to be much hunting involved as tourists are corralled and drugged by the objects of their desire at the titular hostel, then tied down for the wealthy club members to poke, prod, slice, burn, shoot, etc. as they see fit.

The movie toys with your expectations fairly well, as the character most would pick out as the lone survivor is offed fairly quickly (well...as quickly as a movie this sadistically queasy will allow). None of the three main guys are particularly likable, but you can't help rooting for them to escape because godDAMN that looks painful!

Speaking of which, let's talk a little about "torture porn", which is a term that detractors of movies like this or the Saw movies tend to throw around, as though the movies were just 90 minutes of people being tortured. Don't get me wrong, I'm aware the movie isn't Spongebob Hostelpants (though don't you kinda want to see someone tie Spongebob to a chair and yank out those buck teeth with pliers? No? Just me? Moving on.) but it doesn't deserve the reputation it has as a wallow in artless depravity. The violence is graphic but effective, and it makes you squirm because that's exactly what it's setting out to do. There's some honest-to-god suspense in this movie, and it's pretty far from a wall-to-wall gorefest. If you like horror and don't mind if it's gruesome, this is definitely worth a look.