[ClearCase_guy]

It's not pornography -- honestly! [/Austin Powers voice]

[Borges]

There is a movement in Asian films for this sort of graphic visceral horror. It's making its way into American films.

[Restorer]

Odd the different reaction to the violence in this movie and others such as Kill Bill and that found in The Passion, which actually had a reason for showing the violence beyond that of titillating the audience.

[PBRSTREETGANG]

America has been clamoring for movies about "wild Slovakian torture rings".

(Along with ones about gay cowboys.)

[roses of sharon]

I read somewhere that people were fainting at this screening.

I don't get it, how can anyone watch this kind of stuff?

[Old Seadog]

Ho hum

[Joe 6-pack]

Just wait 'til McCain hears about this....

[atomicpossum]

Horror is no longer horror, it's revulsion.

[tx_eggman]

Excrimate

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means ... Inigo Montoya

Main Entry: ex·cre·ment
Pronunciation: 'ek-skr&-m&nt
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin excrementum, from excernere
:waste matter discharged from the body; especially : waste (as feces) discharged from the alimentary canal

You're welcome

[NRA1995]

And Hollywood continues to navel-gaze and ask why people are not paying to see their offerings....

[JennysCool]

excrimate?

Is that like some sort of laxative gum?

[Recon Dad]

After seeing the previews for this film I would hope it would become a staple with our interrogators. At the beginning of an interrogation show this to whom you're interrogating and tell them if you don't cooperate we're sending you to the "Hostel" for further questioning.

I'd be singing like a baby!

[socal_parrot]

I will not go see this movie, having to see the torture scenes in the commercials is gross enough.

[orionblamblam]

[ansel12]

As the warrior pool in America shrinks, the interest in violent fantasy diversions seems to increase.

[Aquinasfan]

This movie's only significance, especially in its popularity, is in its serving as a milestone on our culture's descent.

Hostel

Eli Roth's Hostel is being described by some critics as "horror porn." That means it is exists to encourage and excite our baser appetites by serving up killings, mutilations, and torture—not to mention explicit scenes of sexual misbehavior—for our "entertainment." It's all designed to shock and to horrify audiences.

Guess what? Hostel is also the No. 1 film in America, tops at the box office. That means we're bound to see a lot more of this kind of thing over the next few years, in which other movies try to outdo Hostel—and the two Saw movies—with increasingly intense and explicit violence.

Hostel is about three hedonistic fools who indulge in all manner of unethical pleasures until they find themselves trapped in a game where others fulfill their own appetites for cruelty by torturing human beings and killing them in slow and grisly ways—decapitations, throats slit, heads smashed in, digits being cut off and body parts diced and tossed into a furnace, point-blank shootings, eyes being pulled from sockets, flesh drilled full of holes, a person throwing herself in front of a train, and more. It seems designed to delight people who share the unhealthy appetites of the movie's villains.

Nathan Lee of The New York Times says Roth's immature revelry isn't even good at scaring people. "Inspired by the brutal exploitation pictures of the 1970's and the nasty new breed of Asian horror films, Hostel is motivated by an adolescent urge to shock. And while it's true that no civilized person will remain unscathed by the film's relentless bigotry—this is one of the most misogynistic films ever made—Mr. Roth's gory spectacles are too calculated to deliver the transgressive jolts they so obviously seek."

We could only find one Christian film critic who bothered to suffer through the film (Christianity Today Movies opted to skip it). Marcus Yoars (Plugged In) says, "Days after seeing the film, I'm still wondering how it didn't get slapped with an NC-17 rating, because it pretends to be a porn flick for the first 45 minutes."

Yoars mentions how the filmmaker got the idea for the movie, and then sums up the film. "Roth was captivated with the warped notion that individuals could be so numb to the 'ordinary' vices of sex and drugs that they'd resort to inflicting extreme torture upon someone else as their next high. The result of his twisted fascination is grotesquely misshapen and transparently gratuitous."

Just as disturbing as the film's box office success is the fact that many mainstream critics are applauding it.