In the heat of the current horror boom, it's becoming a lot more difficult to tell which movies are seriously committed genre works and which were rushed into production to make a quick buck. Although Eli Roth displayed some talent as a serious horror filmmaker with his bizarre and blood-laden debut Cabin Fever, it's his second feature, Hostel, that shows he knows his stuff.

Roth has a knack for blending elements of horror with a solid dose of dark comedy. He seduces viewers into letting their guard down before going in for the kill. It's one thing to shove a horrifying situation onscreen and call it horror, but it takes skill to enthrall one's audience into wondering what's going to happen next. This is a skill Roth frequently exercises throughout Hostel, a flick that's difficult to watch but too offbeat and intriguing to look away from.

Our story begins as three young men, Paxton (Jay Hernandez), Josh (Derek Richardson), and Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson), embark on backpacking journey throughout Europe. Rather than take in the historical or architectual splendor of our neighbors across the pond, however, the trio opts to stop at just about every reefer den and sex club they come upon. After being locked out of their Amsterdam hostel one night, the guys catch word of a place in Slovakia where the women are absolutely gorgeous and willing to do pretty much anything in the sack. This is an offer our intrepid heroes can't turn down, as they head to this Eastern European sexual paradise and indeed encounter much of the "local culture."

However, soon strange events start to take place. One of the pair disappears, leaving behind only a shady goodbye note, and the women (Barbara Nedeljakova and Jana Kaderabkova) who showed them a good time in the first place seem reluctant to provide any real answers about where he went. What the remaining young men don't know, but soon discover for themselves, is that their quest for pleasure has been reversed, that where they are now, people are more than willing to pay to use them as objects upon which to inflict the most grisly and unpleasant means of torture money can buy.

What separates a film like Hostel from something like, for example, Wolf Creek involves how the filmmakers decide to spend their time and use the ingredients they're working with. In Wolf Creek, writer/director Greg McLean played a dull hand, laying out his cards in a predictable manner and without the slightest bit of style; it was a horror film in the sense that it followed the same structure of similar genre entries, and its failure resulted in the film itself having no real distinctive traits of its own. Hostel, on the other hand, benefits from its writer/director's go-for-broke approach to horror filmmaking, as Eli Roth doesn't make a straight horror flick here but rather throws in a little bit of everything, resulting in a genre stew that stands out above many of its competitors.

Hostel is a twisted take on the stranger-in-a-strange-land story, featuring a trio of brash, profane, but ultimately likable guys blindly launching themselves into what they dream is a sexual wonderland without any consequences, although there's a persistent vibe telling the audience that these dudes have no clue what they're in for. This may be a mite predictable to anyone who's seen a Hostel trailer, but what makes this horror movie a more intriguing picture than its brothers is how Roth accentuates his underlying themes by showing to what horrible lengths those who have the financial means will go to make their darkest fantasies a brutal reality. Fortunately, Roth doesn't bash his viewers over their collective heads with the message or compromise the film's pure fear factor. As unusually intelligent as Hostel is, it also maintains its more primal side, highligthting an array of increasingly disturbing fates for the film's characters (the most nasty of which is reserved for the movie's final minutes) that'll have the most hardened of moviegoers squirming and wanting to put their hands over their eyes. 

I have only two complaints about Hostel. The first one is that Roth needed a more interesing plot to do his dirty work within. The sights this director devises are gruesomely intriguing enough, but the film as a whole moves at an awkward pace, taking time for the audience to bask in the more sick and disgusting elements of the plot but lurching about from act to act without much tact. My second concern relates to character development. It seems a bit spotty, with solid work done by Hernandez and a darkly funny cameo by Rick Hoffman (whose tiny turn as a recurring jerk in Cellular was one of that picture's highlights) but not enough time given to some of the key supporting players.

Still, with the hit-and-miss horror game turning up with more misses than usual, I'll gladly embrace the flawed but twisted and atmospheric Hostel in all its demented glory.

MY RATING: *** (out of ****)

(Released by Lions Gate Films and rated "R" for brutal scenes of torture and violence, strong sexual content, language and drug use.)