HOSTEL

Directed by Eli Roth

Starring Jay Hernandez

Reviewed by Byron Merritt

THUMBS DOWN FILM REVIEW RATING!

Horror films need more than just sex and slashers ...so if you’re looking for something with higher level cinema, you best look elsewhere. HOSTEL is designed for the young man with an appetite for video-game style plots.

The films premise is, at least, interesting. A hostel in a Slovakian city is a jumping-off point for nightclubs, sexual encounters, drugs ...and murder. The hostel owners are secretively helping a select group of the rich and demented. These wealthy and twisted individuals pay to kill people, and an “art house” on the outskirts of town acts as the facilitator of horrors. For those unweary travelers who happen to fall victim to the wiles of the hostel owners, ending up drugged only to reawaken in Hell on Earth is a gruesome and life-ending discovery.

Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and his friends Josh (Derek Richardson) and Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson) are three college students traveling through Europe. They stop at this hostel and are quickly enraptured with a couple of young women who have an appetite for sex. Once fully involved with these women, the boys begin dropping off one by one. First Oli vanishes, the Icelandic disco-lover. Then Josh, the nice boy. And soon even Paxton finds himself strapped to a chair with an axe-wielding and chainsaw-ripping psycho standing over him.

But Paxton escapes and with him he takes another Japanese girl who was also being tortured to death. Once out, Paxton loses the Japanese girl and soon spots the “main man” responsible for this death camp. Can Paxton exact revenge on him? Or will he get caught and killed?

The main problem with the film were its characters. Josh, the likable guy who seems to be the brains of the trio, is killed off in short order. Paxton, who I thought was a bit of an ass, lives on to exact revenge on the man responsible for doing in his friends. But this revenge sequence felt very flawed as I had no empathy whatsoever for Paxton. Josh, on the other hand, should’ve been the guy to figure out everything and avenge the death of his buddies. Even Oli would’ve been a better choice. He was at least fun to watch and had a great personality. Perhaps the script writers weren’t sure who should live and who should die ...and I think that really showed in the revenge aspect of the film.

Click here for the Hostel movie trailer!