“Hostel” is a dirty, vicious exploitation flick, one better suited to the seedy, sticky-floored grindhouses of 1970s Manhattan than the shining, gleaming multiplexes of today. It’s marketed as a horror movie, and to a certain extent, it is horrific. There are some squishy gore sequences that will leave the average viewer covering his face and peeking through his fingers. But it’s not scary, and by the time the credits roll, it’s not much of a movie.

For the first 45 minutes, “Hostel” is like a bad teen sex comedy—think “European Pie,” but without the sentimentality and with three times as many boob shots. A trio of guys—Paxton (Jay Hernandez), Josh (Derek Richardson) and Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson)—tour Europe by backpack. Paxton and Josh are the typical Ugly Americans, usually drunk and belligerent, yelling about the rights owed to them because they were born in the U.S. Oli, meanwhile, is a charismatic thrill-seeker from Iceland who hooks up with the boys for some adventures in debauchery.

When a skeevy kid in Amsterdam convinces the three to head out to a remote Slovakian city for a chance at even more casual sex, they depart right away. Their destination is grimy and strange, filled with shifty-eyed creeps and a violent gang of grade schoolers. But the hostel where Pax, Josh and Oli room is swanky and populated by good-looking girls, so it’s all good. A night of heavy drinking and drugging with Natalya (Barbara Nedeljakova) and (Jana Kaderabkova) leaves the boys blindsided and bewildered, and when they wake up, Oli is gone without explanation. The next night, Josh disappears, and the persistent Paxton follows Natalya around for answers.

And what horrible answers he gets. The entire city, it seems, is a front for what amounts to a snuff vacation package. Rich out-of-towners pay big bucks to torture and murder kidnapped tourists. Americans, naturally, are the most expensive prey.

Here the film takes a turn from good-natured sex-romp to a relentless, nihilistic torture-fest. For the short time we see Josh, he’s the film’s only marginally likeable character, a sensitive writer-type who is slightly more courteous than Oli and Pax. So it’s jarring when Josh is the second person to wind up in the torture chamber, making the far less likeable Pax into the film’s hero. A throwaway piece of dialogue seems like it gives Pax some sort of redeeming moral qualities (he expresses regret for not acting quickly enough to save a drowning girl in his youth), but all it really does is set up a plot point much later on. Because there’s no emotional attachment to any of the characters, there’s no suspense, no anxiety about whether or not they’ll make it out alive.

It’s clear that writer-director Eli Roth doesn’t care much for his characters, considering the ease with which they’re dispatched. Then again, the whole film is so dark and misanthropic that it’s tempting to think Roth doesn’t care much for people in general. And that’s where “Hostel” exerts its eldritch influence. During the climax, Pax mows down three people with a car and arranges the murder of two others, all of which is fairly graphic. The audience is tempted to laugh and cheer, bringing out that same sick glee the film’s torturers express when they’ve got a hysterical tourist under the knife.

Roth draws a lot of his inspiration from cult Asian films of the last few years, particularly the work of director Takeshi Miike (who makes an amusing cameo in this film). Miike, known for gorefests like “Audition” and “Ichi the Killer,” is well acquainted with the terror associated with blood, viscera and mangled pulpy bits of bodies. But even at his most depraved, Miike still, ahem, fleshes out his characters, making even the sick and twisted understandable, if not likeable. There’s at least some sort of illuminating light to Miike’s work, no matter what kind of shadows it casts. Not so with Roth. By the time Pax gets his revenge, his eyes as cold and steely as the scalpel he now carries, Roth has left us in a dark, dark place that even the raised lights of the theater can’t drag us from. 

written and directed by: Eli Roth.
starring: Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson and Eythor Gudjonsson and Barbara Nedeljakova
rated: R for graphic torture scenes, violence, drug use, nudity and sexual situations