Paxton and John (Hernandez and Richardson) are chucklehead Americans travelling around Europe before settling down to university studies. Along the way they pick up an Icelandic buddy Oli (Gudjonsson), and while wallowing in sex and drugs in Amsterdam, as you do, they hear about a mythical hostel in Slovakia full of oversexed women. Once there, they immediately hook up with two porn-star beauties (Nedeljakova and Kaderabkova). Then Oli goes missing. And they find themselves caught in a brutal underground world of torture and death.

Roth has lifted another shocking idea right from the news, and when he finally gets around to revealing exactly what's going on here, the film becomes much more than the exercise in gratuitous sex and violence that has gone before. Although by then such a major plot point feels like an afterthought since we've already been subjected to scene after scene that play out like some fanboy's Hustler-meets-Fangoria fantasy.

The film's first half is a rather astute look at Americans abroad--engaging and likeable but completely clueless about the real world and over-enthusiastic about discovering things that are new to them, but everyday life for everyone else. Hernandez and Richardson are terrific in these scenes, even when weaving in their rather trite back-stories, and Gudjonsson adds hilarious energy as the wacky Icelander. Then Roth starts introducing quirky, shady characters, conspiratorial glances and, eventually, unspeakable horror.

And this is slickly produced, skilfully directed horror, rather similar to the Aussie nightmare Wolf Creek in structure and tone. It's completely over-the-top in its depiction of suffering and murder, although most of the violence is actually off screen. It does get under our skin; when characters make dangerous/brave decisions, we want to yell, "What are you doing, you idiot? Get out of there!" Sure, this is unnecessarily vicious grisliness, but it still makes us squirm. And when we finally learn the reason, we may want to revise our holiday plans.

themes, language, violence, gore, sexuality, nudity, drugs

18.Jan.06