Hostel

Well-made for the genre-the excessive-skin-displayed-before-gruesome-bloody-torture-begins genre-Hostel follows two randy Americans (Jay Hernandez, Friday Night Lights, and Derek Richardson, Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd) and an even randier Icelander (Eythor Gudjonsson) as they trek to Slovakia, where they're told beautiful girls will have sex with anyone with an American accent. Unfortunately, the girls will also sell young Americans to a company that offers victims to anyone who will pay to torture and murder. To his credit, writer/director Eli Roth (Cabin Fever) takes his time setting things up, laying a realistic foundation that makes the inevitable spilling of much blood all the more gruesome. The sardonic joke, of course, is that Americans are worth the most in this brothel of blood because everyone else in the world wants to take revenge upon them. This dark humor and political subtext help set Hostel above it's more brainless sadistic compatriots, like House of Wax or the Devil's Rejects. In general, though, there's something lacking; horror used to suggest some threat to the spirit-today's horror can conceive of nothing more troubling than torturing the flesh. For aficionados, Hostel features a nice cameo by Takashi Mike, director of bloody Japanese flicks like Audition and Ichi the Killer.

Director: Eli Roth
Producer: Christopher Briggs
Producer: Franco-Giacomo Carbone
Producer: Mike Fleiss
Actor: Jay Hernandez
Actor: Derek Richardson
Actor: Eythor Gudjonsson
Actor: Jan Vlasak
Actor: Barbora Nedeljakova
Actor: Jana Kaderabkova
Actor: Jennifer Lim
Actor: Rick Hoffman
Actor: Paula Wild
Actor: Keiko Seiko
Actor: Lubomir Bukovy
Actor: Takashi Miike
Actor: Miroslav Taborsky
Actor: Ota Filip
Actor: Mark Taylor
Actor: Christopher Allen Nelson