By Edwin Hopkins
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HUGE

Most men, I’m sure, would agree that when we see a gorgeous woman, all our thinking descends below the waistline. It can get us in real trouble, sometimes way over our heads. And especially for coltish young men traveling abroad.
Eli Roth’s horror fare Hostel takes this weakness of the male libido and exploits it to dangerously terrifying proportions. After seeing it, young, middle-aged and old men, single or married will definitely think twice before allowing the seductive wiles of a woman to captivate them.

Needless to say, they eagerly embark on this trip by train and find exactly what their looking for; luscious foreign ladies all too willing to hop in the sack with them. Of course, it takes no time at all for you to figure out that this is some kind of trap and that our heroes are about to experience the closest thing there is to hell on earth.

I first saw Jay Hernandez in the direct-to-video, Carlito’s Way : Rise to Power. His transition from fun loving student to hardened avenger is quite believable, almost similar to Carlito. He has solid potential as a actor and ,like Terrence Howard only needs the right part to secure Oscar gold or at least a Golden Globe.

Our two seductresses, Natalya and Svetlana played by Barbara Nedeljakova (the 3rd debutante in Shanghai Knights) and Jana Kaderabkova respectively are ostensiby natural European beauties untainted by Hollywood. Many men would easily be lured into a torture trap set by them. But I ‘m hoping to see more of them in more dramatic roles.

Eli Roth (Cabin Fever) congeals his young thesps successfully into a film that will have you asking, “How can these people commit such sickening acts to human beings? Hostel is not just a road trip to hell. It is a chilling journey into the dark and demented side of these “ordinary” people, whom, I’m sure, most of us would not want to be associated.

Eli Roth wants to make you his bitch

Super

I was terrified of seeing this movie.

I mean, seriously, freaking terrified.

I called up Mike, said, Dude, we gotta see this thing, but we gotta go together."  Then my buddy Jason showed up on one my bartending shifts and said, "You can't go on Friday, I can't make it then.  We're all going on Monday because no one else will see this with me and I'm not going alone."

Naturally we made fun of him... NOT.  We were thrilled to have it three of us going.  We all went in with the understanding that no one would be mocked for leaving the film.

Because I like horror, I like terror, but I'm, for some odd reason, not huge on torture flicks.  Yeah, I know, I'm a freak.  Watching people get tortured for two hours is far from my first pick for passing time.  I like good gore in movies, love the make-up and special effects aspects of it, but I don't need to see what amounts to me as Nazi training films (such as is the reputation of crap like Chaos, or documentaries like Faces of Death) for giggles.

Hilarity ensues... oh, wait, no it doesn't.  Horror does.  Yes, the gore is so good and disgusting that you'll wonder what bothered you about Chainsaw Massacre (the original) and the terror is so intense that you'll wonder at times what was so scary about The Exorcist (the original), but the film will also keep you so engaged that, despite your better judgment, your desire to see how things turn out for our main characters will keep you watching even those scenes you'll regret watching later.

I, not a gore hound by any definition, recommend Hostel highly.  At once a top-notch horror film and also a social commentary (note the comparisons to brothels and, well, Roth's hostel), Hostel manages to make you rethink some of the things you think of as just good, dirty fun.

And the worst part is, the premise is so solid and realistic, that you'll wonder after you leave the theater if this has ever actually happened in the world.

And then you'll realize it probably has.

Eli Roth has accomplished making what I think will be one of, if not the defining horror movie for this generation.  What Texas Chainsaw Massacre was to the teens and twenty-somethings of the seventies, I think Hostel will be to teens and twenty somethings of the 2000s.  Expect this to be remade by some upstart director in the next twenty years, and expect everyone to say, "Yeah, it was good, but damn, the original was even worse."

Keep an eye out for Hostel, it's a good'un.