Make no mistake about it: Hostel is a very nasty film. Whilst movies like Saw and The Hills Have Eyes were more violent, it's the overall premise of Hostel, people paying to torture helpless backpackers, that disturbs. It also plays on this pre-packaged nastiness and delivers a film that is far less violent than you initially realise. Whilst there are moments that are truly horrid (the "yokey eye" bit springs to mind), a large portion of the violence takes place just off screen, point of fact: during one scene we hear the use of a drill on someone and see pieces of flesh stuck to the drill bit, but we do not see the drilling itself.
If you can muscle passed its grimy, exploitation aesthetic, Hostel, like most with a "dare-you-see-it" reputation, is a mixed bag overall. It's paced perfectly well but it's opening hour is more in the vein of American Pie than a torture porn flick and the script goes beyond childish. There is an immaturity that is at odds with the nastiness that eventually takes place, making it a film of two halves in which both halves jar badly with each other.
It sounds quite sick to say the film is saved by its brutality but it's true. Eli Roth is obviously more comfortable with the on-screen grue and the latter half of the movie is executed rather well (if you excuse the pun). The escape from danger motif builds genuine tension as the protagonist uses his wits to outsmart his captors. In his short directing career, it's this stuff that shows Roth is a perfectly competent director of tense horror.
It's a shame, then, that Hostel: Part II was so boring.
3/5
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