In his nauseating gorefest Hostel, Eli Roth pretends to be concerned about man's inhumanity to man.
What he's actually interested in is exploiting the current appetite for sick and twisted screen violence.
With their themes of mutilation and torture, films such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Saw and Wolf Creek pushed the envelopes of bad taste.
With Hostel, Roth tries to rip the envelope open.
The sickest part of his sick fantasy is set in a Slovakian city that lures hedonistic backpackers from around the world with its promise of sex, booze and drugs.
Americans Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and Josh (Derek Richardson) plan to be lawyers, but first they want to experience as much European decadence as is humanly possible.
Of course, they head for Amsterdam where they met Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson) a married man on a sex and drugs rampage.
One day while partying, the trio meets a young man who tells them if they really want to experience an orgy of excess, they have to head off to Slovakia.
Way back in 1980 with the original Friday the 13th, Sean S. Cunningham had his maniac Jason Voorhees slaughter teens engaging in wanton sex as if that was a just punishment for their sin.
Roth uses the same equation to justify why we should watch Oli, Josh, Paxton and others mutilated in the most vile ways.
What we all eventually discover is the guy back in Amsterdam is actually a recruiter for a torture club that charges big American bucks to allow sociopaths the pleasure of torturing human beings.
It's a bit like the classic short story The Most Dangerous Game, in which humans became prey for hunters seeking the ultimate challenge, only these poor would-be carcasses can't fight back.
That is until Paxton ends up in the torture chamber.
Of course, he finds a way to turn the chainsaw on his torturer and then has to kill other maniacs and security guards during his escape.
The audience is expected to cheer wildly when Paxton becomes the hunter.
Hostel might have been an intriguing horror movie had Roth not been so graphic and if he had created sympathetic central characters.
There's no reason we should care what happens to these three men who objectify women in the worst of ways.
We wince because it's difficult to watch fingers and limbs being hacked off, eyes pulled from their sockets and flesh ripped from bone.
Our sympathies are not so much for the victims but for having subjected ourselves to such sickening nonsense.
The best that can be said for Hostel and Roth's direction is that the production values are much better than they were in his debut horror flick Cabin Fever.
(This film is rated 18-A)
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