AmateurMovieReviews.com

I don't generally like horror flicks, but because I like Quentin Tarantino I rented this last weekend for fair judgment purposes. I don't think Tarantino was the director, but I guess he produced this film or something similar. You can see his influence but it doesn't seem to be his invention. My general take on a horror movie is that if it is scary scary (meaning suspenseful, emotionally wrenching, just plain creepy, etc.), it might be worth the pain, but if it is bloody scary or weird alien animal thing scary or someone gets cut in half while camping scary, I tend to be on the "they're all the same" side of things, even if it isn't completely true. Well, I don't know if I was expecting scary scary from Quentin Tarantino, but i was expecting something at least semi-unique, falling outside the typical lines of the cookie cutter type horror films that usually come out. In the end, there were some painful and bloody, torturous scenes (both literally and figuratively), but the nice (scary!) part about the movie is the idea behind it. Speaking of which, by the way, you shouldn't continue reading if you haven't seen it, because I'm going to blow it for you if you haven't.

There were some definite Tarantino moments in the movie, but it definitely wasn't his typical fare. The movie centers around two Americans touring Europe, who are naturally, staying in hostels, going out, doing lots of drinking, and everything possible with the girls. There are three guys traveling together in the beginning but one of them disappears so quickly he's easy to forget about (a "drifter" from Iceland whom they have picked up in some random European city).

Here's the plot spoiler: one particular hostel in an eastern-european town whose name has already left me, has a fantastic reputation for hosting a slew of girls who love foreigners. In reality, though, those girls attract, seduce, and then drug and sell their foreign pals to a sick operation in an old factory building in the countryside. We see the boys one by one disappearing, sometimes with other random guests from the hostel. We see hints that they are being held and tortured but we have no idea why for a long time. We even watch one of the boys being tortured terribly and still have no idea what the purpose of this terrible place is. It only becomes clear after the critical moment happens when one of them (inevitably) escapes from his torturer and gets a disgusting inside look at what goes on.

So what's actually happening is that somebody is running this business (for very high stakes!), which allows clients to pay in order to have an innocent traveler bolted to a chair, and free (and privately) access to a table full of all manner of torture instruments. The client can choose the nationality, etc., of its victim, and do whatever he (or she, but there weren't any) wants with him or her, before turning over what's left and paying up. The crazy thing is that the whole town and government seems to be supporting the whole thing (it makes sense, because it should be extremely profitable I guess, though i'm not sure if in the real world it would be so popular), which is clearly evident when the main character gets away and tries to leave not only the gruesome site itself but also the town. There is (obviously) a car in furious pursuit after him, checkpoints in the road out and even the train station is crawling with seeming "agents" of some kind trying to find him.

The movie keeps you guessing about what the hell is really going on, and in that sense it is well put together. Although I wouldn't watch the movie again because the torture scenes are a bit too much for me to wait through a second time, I think it would definitely be interesting to have a second look after you finally know what's really going on, to catch all those tricky details that distract or foreshadow without you ever realizing it the first time around.

While I thought the idea was a clever one for a horror movie, I wasn't THAT impressed with its originality at first, but over the next few days when I found myself still caught up in the idea of being able to torture freely, for a price, I became more and more impressed. When I realized that I was being preoccupied long after the movie not by the obvious questions, like who would want to do such a thing, how can the girls stand to sell random tourists for the price of a fancy fur coat without any qualms, and how do the guys who clean up after all that not get sick, but rather questions like why did that person choose that particular torture, how can they have a pressure so deep inside them that torturing someone brings them actual pleasure (or at least vengeance of some kind?), and how do those people go about their daily lives (for example, those shown to have children) after having experienced that?

Some of the funniest (in a kind of sick way, of course -- Tarantino like, that is) scenes happen when the main character escapes. This is also one of the most tension-filled parts of the movie. He is being tortured, which is always agonizing to watch, but his escape is not trivial and I like that about it. Just before he escapes, his torturer cuts off the last two fingers of one of the boy's hands with a chainsaw (just before chainsawing himself to death when he slips by accident on one of the fingers!) and when the main character escapes he takes the fingers with him, presumably with the hopes of reattaching them somehow. After he escapes, we still don't quite understand what's going on in this torture place, and obviously neither does he, and yet he still has to try to find a way out of there. First he tries to get somewhere by hiding *under* a dead, bloody, broken body that is on a cart set to be "taken out". He doesn't know where it's going to take him, but I guess he doesn't have any idea what to do. Well, "taken out" ends up being to a room where a "butcher" cuts the bodies into little pieces in order to burn them in a furnace (through an old smokestack that is part of the factory and a signature of the torture building). While the "butcher" is cutting up the body that the main character had been hidden under, the two fingers fall on the floor, and there is a stretched, focused scene of the boy trying to pick up his two fingers from the floor with a two-fingered hand. This part is distressing and yet amusing, and is held out just long enough to make the irony fly in your face. Too bad the next body part the butcher picks up to incinerate are the fingers.

After finally escaping (don't worry, there are many details worth seeing that I haven't provided) the boy "runs into" the same man who was on the train with them on the way to the creepy town. They are on the same train back out. In a train station in Germany or somewhere, when they get off the train, he follows the torturer (who by coincidence, is the one who killed the other traveling friend) in to the bathroom, locks the door, and kills him in the stall. Not before, of course, cutting off his last two fingers (which I mistakenly thought at first, he was going to take in order to try to put onto his own hand, but I was very wrong--it was just for revenge I guess). I'm not sure how I feel about this little piece of cheesy vengeance getting, but i certainly wouldn't think of a better way to end the thing. The movie ends shortly after that, with no downflow or aftermath. No knowing what happens to the guy, his fingers, his friend's family, if he tells what happened, if the place is discovered, etc. That's annoying but I think the effect is good. I was satisfied enough with the ending.

There was something intriguing, though, about the man who tortures the main character before he escapes. He seems confused, nervous, and this is the first time you can start to realize that this is not just a place where someone crazy cuts up people for fun, or just someone getting revenge for never getting into medical school doing his own form of sick surgery. As becomes obvious later, this is not someone who was used to torture...he couldn't decide which tools to use, he got visibly bothered when the boy started begging for freedom, first in English, and then in German, which seemed to be the torturer's language. Just when you think he is going to have mercy (because he had clearly "paid for" an American and the boy was convincing him that he was German), he gets even angrier and continues. It's terrible to watch the first time but it's worse when you think about it later, when you realize what was going on. That character, for me, was one of the more thought-provoking ones because he is clearly so nervous and yet still seems to get some sort of pleasure, finally, from the torture.

The creepiest line from the movie for me was when the boys are traveling to the treacherous town on a train, unknowingly sitting next to one of the people who is traveling to the town as a "client" who in the end, cuts up one of the guys. That man, upon hearing that they are going to that hostel because they have heard of the girls there, says "you can pay to do anything in that town. ANYthing." Of course, you don't realize the severity of that line until after the movie, when you realize he wasn't talking about prostitutes or drugs.

Overall, I think the movie was fine, even though I don't like horror films generally. The plot is well-thought-out and certainly thought-provoking. I'm sure that if you like horror movies at all, you are going to like this one. And even if you don't generally, this one may be worth a look.