Tourism video, this is not. After thoroughly enjoying Cabin Fever (those who hated it clearly have not watched enough horror movies), I expected Hostel to be as charming, and considering the hype and the Tarantino endorsement, I was left with a slight tinge of disappointment in my mouth. The setting is perfect to say the least, some little unknown town in the Ukraine (nice touch!) where no one knows nor cares about what happens behind closed doors, the perfect environment for a horror movie. The criticism of the tourist industry as a catering of your wildest fantasies is well proportioned as well as the cunning stabs at stereotypical 'American' behaviour in foreign lands is greatly thought out, yet there is something missing. Unlike Cabin Fever, Roth attempts to move away from the homage (yet can we really?) and divulge the inner darkness that is within all of us. Supposedly based on the content of a real Thai website, the intensity, the pacing, and the realism becomes thinner and thinner as the film progresses and we are left with a typical, although blunt ending. At last, the characters are hardly developed enough for us to be sympathetic to their exploits. All in all, a great setup that lets itself be confined within a lacklustre denouement. Roth also gets some extra points for including Takakshi Miike in a cameo; only the master of the extreme could quantify the unsettling events that occur in Roth's film.
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