Hostel

Estimated budget: $4,500,000

Another horror movie right after the Christmas and New Year holidays? What in the world are people thinking. Maybe they aren't thinking. That would explain a lot.

Here we have another low budget no-where flick. These aren't any fun because it's almost impossible for a movie this cheap to not make a profit, and since the same guy wrote and directed it, I smell somebody's half-baked pet project. A little inspired entertainment would be nice, please.

What's Working

• For the price of this movie, you could produce about 4 1/2 hour long episodes of a TV show.
• The trailers give the impression that it's a Quentin Tarantino film.
• The cast is full of nobodies, which means there shouldn't be any spoiled attention whores disrupting things. Plus they double as cooks, valets, cleaners, personal assistants to the cleaners, and if necessary, you can use them to hold the sets up.
  

What's Not

• It's not a Tarantino film. He's listed as an Executive Producer, one of three, along with 3 normal Producers, 2 Co-Producers, and the Line Producer (who probably did more than all of them combined.)
• The acting cast has no proven talent.
• The director is also the writer, this is almost always bad. Without someone to tell you no, you get things like the Star Wars prequals.

Eli Roth's professional history does not impress me. He may in fact be a very talented person, at what, I haven't quite figured out yet. He's been a production assistant (get me coffee, double strong, double sweet!), animator, actor, director, writer, producer, and an editor. That's 8 projects as an actor, 7 as a director, and 7 as a writer.

Something tells me this guy is either Jesus on the set, or he thinks he is. I have never heard of anything the man has done, with the exception of Donnie Darko, though his soul credit to this film is a "special thanks". Okay then.

I know nothing of this films plot, other than it's supposed to be scary and a gore fest. This will not play well right after the big Winter holidays, doesn't sound like a good story, doesn't have much of a budget, and is being dishonest in it's portrayal of Tarantino's involvement with the film.

Result

Fiscal success. At $4.5 million, it would be virtually impossible to not make it's money back. Too bad it'll suck.