Best movie of this year hands down!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

When I saw the movie at the flea market for a buck, I said, "What the heck, it's Tarantino." I had trouble following the movie due to a lack of confusing flashbacks (It's a joke.)Three guys are touring Europe doing guy things. They meet a man who tells them about a Hostel in a small isolated town in Eastern Europe where there is an overabundance of pretty women who have nothing better to do than to throw themselves at anyone with a foreign accent, and they love all Americans. When they get there (note "Pulp Fiction" on TV) it is true. Women who look like models unashamedly share sleeping quarters with men, give them drugs and have sex with them.One by one the men disappear (as do the Japanese girls) and are tortured to death, aka "Blood Sucking Freaks". Paxton (Jay Hernandez) the last of the trio demands to know where his friends are... The slaughterhouse was filmed at an actual mental hospital in Prague.Sex, nudity, f-bomb, torture.

Good movie if you're into intense gore and nail biting scenes, however there are a lot of shake your head (why would you do that) moments.

"Hostel" is a mystery horror movie in which we watch a group of friends traveling around Europe with their backpacks. While they are in Amsterdam they meet a person who tells them about a hostel somewhere in Eastern Europe close to Bratislava where all the girls are crazy about tourists and especially for American men. So, they are going there but everything is too good to be true and soon everything will change for them.I liked this movie because it had an interesting plot and many scenes with suspense which kept me alert for the most duration of it. I also liked the direction of Eli Roth's and I believe he did a great job on it. I also liked the interpretations of Jay Hernandez who played Paxton and Jan Vlasák who played as a Dutch Businessman. I believe that either you watch this movie alone or with company you are going to have a great time since the suspense is in the most out. Finally, I have to say that "Hostel" surprised me in a good way because it is a horror movie that combines very well horror scenes with mystery. It's an interesting movie with many twists and I believe that you aren't going to waste your time watching it. I believe that if you are a fan of horror movies you are going to love it but if you are not then it's good to reconsider watching this movie.

Unfairly dismissed as torture porn by many critics, this terrific horror film plays off audience expectations and takes them on a terrifying ride you cannot predict where it will go. The story revolves around a group of three Americans traveling through Europe, staying in hostels. Two are obnoxious party-boys and one is the nice-guy character. When one of the obnoxious guys is lured away by pretty girls, the two remaining become suspicious of what happened and begin to investigate. All the while, since the film opened with images of horrific implements of torture in a dark, dank torture chamber, the audience has already had seeds planted in their minds of what really happened. Writer/director Eli Roth does an amazing job of playing against horror film tropes and audience expectations, particularly (SPOILER ALERT) when he kills off the nice-guy hero of the film Marion Crane-style and the audience is left without a safety net. After that, it feels as if anything is possible, which has the impact of creating genuine suspense now that we've seen that all of the characters are expendable. Roth really knows his horror films (his first film, "Cabin Fever," was a slasher film without a slasher, and it completely worked), and he uses that knowledge to surprise the audience throughout. When the nice-guy is killed, it's as if all bets are off and anything can happen. It also helps that the film doesn't feature and name actors, because when you cast Brad Pitt in your film, you know Brad Pitt isn't going to be killed. This tension is olstered by Roth establishing early on in the film that he's not going to cut away from the violence and that he is going to show the audience the full bloody graphic horror of what's happening (and it's extreme!). As with the best horror films, "Hostel" has an interesting subtext about America's interventionist nature around the globe and how that's received by the rest of the world. American arrogance is a ripe topic for a revenge-like thriller, especially when it's framed around an underground Eastern European business that caters to the depraved murderous desires of wealthy men who want the exotic adventure of torturing and murdering attractive youth without consequences.This film is credited (or accused) of ushering in the "torture porn" horror subgenera, which it most certainly did. Extreme horror films, like "Audition" or "Ichi the Killer" had been around Asia Cinema for awhile, and Roth rightfully gives a not to those film with a cameo appearance by Takashi Miike, the likely the originator of "extreme" horror films. "Saw" did come out the year before, but it relied more on traditional implied horror instead of showing all the graphic violence (unlike it's subsequent sequels). Roth also provides other nods that horror fans will likely pick up on, such as the slow tracking shots of the door at the end of the torture hallway as a nice homage to the menacing door at the end of the hall in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." Overall, "Hostel" is a film that is not intended to appeal to a wide audience and not even to all horror fans, but for horror film fans of a hearty nature, this film is amazing!