Eli Roth's Hostel

New in the theatres: HOSTEL. Writer/director/local Boston boy Eli Roth is one very disturbed person. Not untalented, but totally unfocused. HOSTEL is not, as advertised, a horror film. It is a splatter film, with all the requisite nudity and gore the genre demands.

On that level it succeeds, but don't go looking for a real plot, any acting or even a hint at any social commentary. All Roth gives you is unlikable characters, naked women and lots and lots of blood. Reportedly three times the amount of fake blood was used on HOSTEL than Roth used on his earlier splatter film, CABIN FEVER.

There is nothing wrong with a good splatter film every now and then, but to hear Roth tell it, he'd made the CITIZEN KANE of gore. Obviously Roth has picked up his buddy Quentin Tarantino's knack for shameless self-aggrandizement, but HOSTEL does show flashes of promise (the street kids and the American businessman both could have made a much more interesting movie if they had been elevated beyond minor roles), but the characters Roth chose to highlight were so unlikable, we were left with no one to root for. By film's end it really didn't matter who lived or died.

HOSTEL is not a date film, unless you are seeing Courtney Love, but this will definitely be a hit with the Chino and baseball cap crowd, and; if they can pay attention for 95 minutes, the criminally insane. In other words, I liked it. You have been warned.