Eli Roth
Hostel

There are movies that aren't scary.

And there are movies that are.

I'm not talking about the kind of fear that, after watching "The Exorcist," makes you want to snuggle under the blankets in the middle of the bed for fear there might be something under your mattress that could grab you while you sleep.

I'm talking about REAL fear, the one that makes you look at your neighbor and wonder what absurd and bloody perversions secretly touch his mind. Or, even worse, which of these perversions could touch yours...

What is a human being capable of when given no restraints? What could some people do with the justification of having signed a legitimate contract and paid a regular fee? It is this question that director Eli Roth tries to answer through his movie "Hostel," a thriller-splatter-horror with crude, strong, violent scenes, sometimes at the limit of bearable.

But it is not the scenes of the film that are the true psychological torture devised by good old Roth, rather a simple idea, a series of questions that his film entraps in the minds of viewers... what if it were all true? What if there really were places where you pay and are allowed to kill, but above all, to sadistically torture another person? And then... if these places exist, they must have customers... but who are they? Who can find pleasure in mutilating and killing a fellow human being? Outcasts of society? Or respectable people who pay exorbitant amounts to go to Slovakia to vent the stress of a businessman’s life or a model husband’s life on a poor unfortunate tourist who is lured, drugged, and sold like meat to slaughter?

Sure, this plot may be pure fantasy, but it draws inspiration from reality, as we all know the stories of Jack the Ripper and the Monster of Florence, to name just two among the thousands of psychopaths who enjoyed (and enjoy) torturing and killing for the sheer pleasure of doing so.

In short, it is well known that there are individuals capable of committing atrocities of all kinds... and you?