Hostel

“Welcome To Your Worst Nightmare.” ~Hostel (2005)

IMDB Summary: Three backpackers head to a Slovak city that promises to meet their hedonistic expectations, with no idea of the hell that awaits them.

Rotten Tomatoes rating: 61%

Why I love it: It would be weird to say I love it. I will say bravo to the best use of a homonym ever used in a horror movie title.

First, I may never go to Eastern Europe after watching this movie. Second, guys are so stupid. All it takes it a hot chick with great tits to turn their head and they’re easily led to their own slaughter. And third, now I think this kind of thing actually exists—paying money to torture and kill people. I guess we should all be happy we’ve been warned. (Read “Is the Movie Hostel based on a True Story?)

Two stupid American college boys Paxton and Josh travel to Amsterdam, make friends with an Icelandic dude and end up in Slovakia after being told the women there are extra hot. They get it on with two of them who are paid temptresses, who drug guys so rich people can torture them in an abandoned building turned dungeon for sickos. (We learn in Hostel II that snagging Americans fetches the highest fee, probably because we’re so obnoxious and the world hates us.) A gang of dirty neighborhood kids are running around like little future torturers. Paxton goes looking for Josh, who is being drilled into by a sadistic Dutch busninessman back at the farm. The killers wear leather butcher aprons, which I have to say for some reason is one of the most frightening images of all.

When Natalya, having lured Paxton to imminent mutilation, says “I got a lot of money for you and that makes you my bitch,” we kind of want her to die. After a series of near escapes, Paxton hightails it out of there—looking kind of hot in the trench coat and gloves of a super creepy fuck he offs—with a Japanese girl whose eye has been torched. He barrels over Natalya and her friends in a the car he stole for his getaway. He hops a train to Austria and kills the fat Dutch guy in the restroom of a train station after slipping him a tell tale calling card from the “Elite Hunter’s Club.” Excuse me, but how do these wannabe killers even find each other? Linkedin?

Critics, along with movies of the same grusome ilk like Saw and The Hills Have Eyes call it “torture porn.” Jesus. I call it “this is so disturbing and gratuitously violent I can’t believe I’m watching it.” Not that that kind of thing ever stopped me before…

Next: Scream