This movie was great. Not in a sense that it was the best movie ever made, but it kept moving. It has been a while since I've reviewed a movie with a lot of gore and a real story. The combination is hard to find in horror movies as of late, and actually rare throughout the entire history of the genre.

The movie starts out with the first half depicting three packers in Europe (2 from the US, 1 from Iceland) and how they view women as objects. Sex objects to be exact. They are obsessed with finding sex in Europe, which seems to be the only reason they are there. The cinematography does a great job of portraying this too. Not just in showing naked women, but the scenes they are in. Something as normal as a conversation in an apartment will have people in the background having sex. The pace picks up a bit when the three are sent to a hostel in Slovakia in a little run down factory town.

Overall, this movie does have an underlying dark humor. You may even be asking yourself afterwards "Why am I laughing at this?" The gore scenes are painful and bloody, but for some reason almost humorous. The victims almost seem like they are being toyed with.

I would definitely recommend this as a buy on DVD. Just make sure you get the unrated version!

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First, go here for my angry, rambling, mostly pointless essay on the various themes most people seemed to skip over in this movie.

For an actual review, I'll mainly say that I enjoy watching Eli Roth work. He's most obviously a huge horror fan and just wants to make fun, offensive, gory movies that are easy to watch. Yeah, there are some levels of depth to Hostel; nothing too expansive, but they are there. But, in the end, it's a pretty simple story that moves along at a slick pace with some attempt at character development and loads of dark humor.

What I really find funny personally is people think this movie and its cousins (Saw, Devil's Rejects, etc.) are these super-depraved movies the likes of no one has ever seen before. I've said it before, but I'll say it again: Hostel isn't that bad. It isn't that gory, comparatively. Go back to the 1970's and early 80's horror releases and compare. Take Cannibal Holocaust or something like "Last House on the Left" if you want something super gory for the former and depraved for the latter. Give me a break, the movies today are so conservative by comparison (even compared to stuff in the 1920's, in a different context) that I crack up anytime someone dismisses movies like this as "snuff porn" or something.

I'm not knocking Hostel, by any means; I'm pretty glad that movies like this exist now actually. I'm glad there are movies that are offending people again. For that, Hostel is not only a fun watch, it's an important movie as it really makes you think about where you stand in the world when it comes to artist license, free speech, and your own sensibilities. Keep going Eli!

Final note: Ollie is the best character ever.

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