1.5/4  For the weak-minded and strong-stomached
Ghoulish, gruesome, gross-out thriller with graphic moments of brutality, torture and gore without a hint of suspense; apart from the gratuitous scenes of sex and nudity, the only thing this has going for it is an ending that gives the au... (read full)

0.5/4  Nevermind, I'l watch Sound of Music
This film is why people call horror films tasteless art. It is a compilation of blood, boobs, and bad acting. Plus, even the concept is pretty sweet, the story sucks and spells horrible drab slasher film. This is a story about guys tryi... (read full)

1/4  Hostel Quick Review
Eli Roth needs to get the hell out of film.

3/4  Hostel Quick Review
I thought this was a great change from your typical horror genre bullshit.

3/4  Hostel Quick Review
Every horror fan is going to get something from this movie. I have nothing else to say except that this movie is gory great!

2/4  Hostel Quick Review
bloody; gory; enlightening.

  Hostel Quick Review
gory;gritty; strange charachters;quite an ending.

3/4  Hostel Quick Review
It starts off as a bad EuroTrip knock-off but quickly turns into the grittiest, rawest horror movie in recent memory. There's no deep story, witty diologue or great acting; just brutal in-your-face violence and gore, and that's fine with me

5/5 Hostel... Motel Hell
  by Julian Kennedy (St Pete Florida)
Hostel: 10 out of 10: Half Eurotrip style sex comedy (with a seventies level of nudity) and half the doctor scene from Bloodsucking Freaks, yeah I might as well stop my review right there it's a 10.

Director Eli Roth (Cabin Fever) has scored a bull's eye simply by going back to what makes exploitation films great. Thus he produces a film that could have been lensed in the freewheeling year of 1975 rather than PG-13 stuffy year of 2005.

The film starts with two American college students and an Icelandic hanger on enjoying some debauchery in Amsterdam. They hear about a nirvana for sex and drugs in Slovakia and they pursue it as if they were traversing the Himalayas to find Shangri-La.

What they find is,,, well I won't spoil it for you but they should have stuck with the marijuana brownies and overpriced Dutch hookers.

The movie actually makes torture scenes enjoyable again. (I generally have hated the whole torture motif in modern film for example Rest Stop.) Roth unlike his contemporaries shows the gore without those annoying zooming camera tricks. The leads are unlikable in a fun rather than irritating way (not easy to do) and the film has both a wonderful energy and plentiful surprises.

Oh and there is copious amounts of extremely well done gratuitous nudity and sadistic gore. One of the best films of 2005.




3/5 both more and less than i thought it would be
  by B. Lafave (lakeland , fl)
great idea . pretty good story telling . some flawed prosthetic work (the lovely japanese girl) . yeah , that was the point at which the picture kinda derailed for me a pretty fair bit . i thought the acting was uniformly quite good .the ease of our hero's escape strained credibility a good measure also . oh , and the street urchin flip/flop was silly as well . glad i saw it to judge for myself . glad we had a likable and winning protagonist . satisfactory . i liked MR. ROTH'S CABIN FEVER a bit more . i'd recommend both to folks with strong stomach's .

5/5 My favorite horror movie of all-time.
  by John McClung (Freehold, NY USA)
If you're looking for the most extremely dark and disturbing horror movie packed with graphic bloody violence and gore, look no further. Hostel is as good as it gets. It has a lot of suspense and foreshadowing, but once it really gets going it never stops. It is relentlessly action-packed and is truly scary. In fact, [...] called it "the scariest movie in a decade", and in my opinion, it is the scariest movie ever. Hostel starts in Amsterdam, where we meet two American college students who are backpacking through Europe, along with an Icelandic man, smoking weed and having sex along the way. While in Amsterdam, they meet a young man their age who tells them about a hostel in Slovakia where the girls go crazy for Americans, and so they decide to go. However, once they arrive they find themselves being lured in as victims of a secret club, the members of which are involved in an elaborate conspiracy involving sex and sadistic torture. However, this film is much better than the similar movie Saw, perhaps because Hostel is produced by Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction) and written and directed by Eli Roth (Cabin Fever), who also worked together on Inglourious Basterds. This is not your average horror movie or slasher flick. HorrorMovies.Ca described it as "sick, twisted, disgusting, and absolutely brilliant". Perhaps the scariest thing about this movie is its realistic plausibility. The idea that the things in this movie could actually happen stays with you long after you see it. Hostel is definitely not for the squeamish or faint-of-heart. It is often times stomach-churning and will make you cringe and say "I don't know if I can watch this". I wouldn't be surprised if someone vomited while watching Hostel. I recommend this movie only to those who think they can handle it. Special features on this DVD include 4 commentary tracks, a multi-part behind-the-scenes featurette called 'Hostel Dissected' and a multi-angle interactive featurette. Also, this is the unrated version of the film, which is supposedly even more sick and twisted than the theatrical version. I didn't see Hostel at the movie theater, so I can't confirm that, but rest assured this movie is a brutal bloodbath that shows you how Quentin Tarantino does horror.

1/5 Where's the GORE? An essay in why I hate Hostel.
  by JT (Odessa)
First off, Hostel unrated has very little to offer. It's a ploy to sell more discs I feel and I'm glad I only borrowed it, otherwise my wallet would have felt pretty darn cheated.

Secondly, it's not that scary. In fact it's boring..... I was asleep faster than Lord of the Rings.

Third, very little gore....WHAT!?! This was supposed to be the goriest flick since Texas Chainsaw Massacre!

The film comes off as a shot at Takashi Miike, who's film "Audition" freaked the hell out of people in the infamous last fifteen minutes (hand raised I was scared too). The entire film drags out on a hiking trip to Amsterdam and comes off more like porn than actual horror movie, only a few cheap thrills add to the horror atmosphere. Nearly ninety minutes of boobs and sex later, we finally get to the gore. *MAJOR GROAN OF DISAPPOINTMENT*

I will warn you, SPOILERS AHEAD! But believe me, you'll have to agree at least some if you have watched it.

First off, KNB effects is the best in the business when you want the Rolls Royce of Gore. I mean they are the tops with Greg Nicotero, Protege of Tom Savini, helming the guts department. But sadly, their best work winds up in the garbage can here.

The ill-lit "torture rooms" make the gorey stuff impossible to see, especially that tendon slash scene which looked beautiful in the behind-the-scenes video. Here it was blackened out (WTF?) in the final cut. The scariest tendon slash I've seen and still freaks me out even in the daylight was the Gage Creed hide-under-the-bed-and slash-your-heel-with-a-scalpel from PET SEMETARY. That is one sequence I cannot watch. The other was the pencil-right-between-the-tendon-and-ankle bit from EVIL DEAD. That was scary, I covered my eyes.

Slash with a scalpel in an ill lit room with the obvious green light from Saw? No, I laughing. And I died a little inside because how great effects work was killed by shoddy lighting.

Worse was the autopsy sequence, you can clearly see the fake skin under the powerful light as it "glow's" because of the materials translucency (probably silicone or gelatine from what I understand).

Another sequence is where the guy's hiding under the bodies and the body parts are obvious jiggling like jello on the bumps, when they shouldn't as they are supposed to simulate something with bone and should flop. Probably halloween props at best, because KNB's stuff is pretty realistic.

And finally, the eyeball sequence. I felt sorry for that Asian chick that gets her face burned off and having to have her eyeball removed with a pair of scissors. Shame on you Eli, she was such a pretty gal too.

After seeing this film, I've would have done the same as she did: Jump in front of a train at how horrible this film was.

But the greatest travesty was how they invited Miike to appear as a Japanese Business man leaving the torture building near the end. A great director in a shoddy homage to himself? What was he thinking?

The only saving grace was the revenge sequences, which filled my wasted time with a few good chuckles at how I want to hit the people who made this with a car, much like the main did to the people who tricked into the hostel. Then I'll jump in front of that train.

5/5 Modern Horror has Guts
  by A Customer (L.A.)
Frankenstein and the Wolfman terrified audiences in their time. Half a century after is very different. Buckets of blood later has a clever, well done Hostel; which restrains itself in the most horrible; the horror that man does to man. Almost Neo-Noir Horror as the horny kids fall into a Holiday Hell, Euro style. The best of this type of film; Roth is fantastic : the photography and actors are real characters and have you along for the ride. Rough; but so was the Exorcist. A/V tops, Loud shaker, great widescreen, sound and photography. Rated NF (not for a lot of people)