HOSTEL

Just when you thought American movies couldn’t sink any lower, some sleazy Hollywood enfant terrible is sure to prove you wrong.

HOSTEL is an extremely gruesome horror movie about three tourists in Slovakia in Eastern Europe, who become victims of an underground business that lures and sells human captives to sadistic torturers seeking perverted thrills, real blood and murder. The movie also contains abundant, very strong sexual content, obscenity and nudity, which means that it will be even more of an evil threat to millions of vulnerable teenagers and children than the average horror flick.

In the story, two American college students are traveling in Amsterdam with a Spanish friend they’ve met. After whoring around free-spirited Amsterdam one night, they have to sneak back into their hostel. A man from Eastern Europe helps them get in and tells them about a town in Slovakia where they can have the most gorgeous, most willing girls imaginable.

The three young men take the man at his word. Sure enough, when they show up at the hostel, they almost immediately hook up with three beautiful, willing women. Then, one by one, the men start to disappear, and it’s up to the third man, Paxton, to investigate. He discovers that two of the women have helped kidnap his friends, who then have been tortured and mutilated to death by sadistic foreigners who pay for such victims. American victims, of course, bring the highest fee.

When Paxton himself is kidnapped, he has to go to great, violent lengths to get free.

Before the bloody torture and mutilation scenes in this movie, the filmmakers provide viewers with lots of pornographic sex and female nudity. They also include some drug references. Thus, HOSTEL is a perfectly despicable movie. In fact, even though the American survivor escapes, he does so by brutally killing several of the torturers along the way. He also goes out of his way to enact gory revenge on his friend’s murderer and another accomplice.

HOSTEL is low-budget schlock horror with a big budget sensibility. Regrettably, its slick production values and edge-of-your-seat thrills will seduce many children and teenagers, not to mention many secular movie critics. One of the very best ways to redeem this awful situation is by training the world’s young people in the kind of media-wisdom tools that we advocate here at MOVIEGUIDE®. Only then can we teach young moviegoers to reject such horror movies in favor of more redemptive, wholesome activities, including Bible study and the like. As long as this kind of gruesome horror movie keeps making lots of money, Hollywood will keep producing them.

Americans must no longer let filmmakers like these do whatever they want in the name of free speech and some false, twisted and liberal definition of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Perhaps it’s time for society, including local and state governments, to hold them accountable by putting them in jail for inciting murder and torture, as well as promoting sexual behavior leading to sexually transmitted diseases that can kill you. After all, if a businessman who deliberately and greedily, with malice aforethought, causes the public to ingest or breathe some form of deadly pollution deserves the death penalty, why shouldn’t the government convict the filmmakers of HOSTEL for murder and send them to death row? MOVIEGUIDE® fails to see the difference between these two kinds of pollution. In fact, it may be successfully argued that mental and spiritual pollution is a far more serious matter than physical pollution. They can kill your body, for example, but your heart, mind and soul may still be saved. If, however, they kill your heart, mind and soul, the result will be eternal suffering and eternal damnation in the lowest circle of Hell.

Of course, lovingly teaching media wisdom and redeeming the values of these poor filmmakers, not to mention redeeming their souls, is a better solution than capital punishment. After all, leading someone to Christ and His pure love is the best thing you can do for them, not only for their eternal heart, mind and soul, but also for their physical being.