American law student Paxton (Jay Hernandez), his dorky buddy Josh (Derek Richardson) and a party animal from Iceland (Eythor Gudjonsson) they’re backpacking through Europe with take a break from getting thrown out of clubs and cavorting with Dutch prostitutes to head to Slovakia, lured by tales of an off-the-map hostel filled with beautiful Euro babes who want to do nothing but have sex with Americans.

While the hostel initially comes through as promised, the party animal has disappeared. Paxton and Josh get a picture message from him saying he’s gone home, unaware that the head appearing in their camera phone has … been severed! They investigate, encountering Slovakian weirdos – including a pack of kids who roam the alleys extorting whatever they can from tourists – but no sign of the party animal.

That evening, their Euro dates drug their drinks; Paxton stumbles into a restroom and passes out, while Josh wakes up in the kind of dingy room that exists only in the Saw franchise, cuffed to a chair next to all manner of knives, drills and pliers. He pleads with the man who enters, offering him money to let him go, but is told that he’s paying “them” money for this to go down.

Paxton goes in search of his friends and is led to a spooky abandoned factory, under the pretenses that it’s an art exhibit. The factory is home to “Elite Hunting,” where wealthy western clients pay to go into a room, and, well, you get the idea.

Written and directed by Eli Roth, who followed up the ridiculous Cabin Fever with a consistent film, though his flesh eating virus/comedy/horror debut was so scattered brained, you couldn’t make anything that was more inconsistent. The goal here was less a homage to his favorite movies of all time, and more a hard, R-rated horror film for adults, going places where studio horror movies don’t.

Roth apparently got the idea when Internet film critic Harry Knowles told Roth about a website that alleged to let clients go into a room in Bangkok and kill somebody. While never established whether the site was a hoax or not, the concept inspired Roth to bang out a script and show it to pal Quentin Tarantino, who helped develop it and served as executive producer.

Hostel was a timely idea for a splatter movie all right, inadvertently conjuring up images of Abu Gharib, beheadings in Iraq and the behavior of ugly Americans around the globe, making the concept, and some of the imagery even more disturbing. Roth also had the nerve to do it as a hard R that is indeed way more antisocial than anything coming out of the studios.

Written, produced, directed and released all in a 12 month period, the exuberance with which the movie was made by Roth and his buddies is all there (Scott Spiegel and Boaz Yakin served with Tarantino as executive producers), but so is the sloppiness it was rushed into theaters with.

This is a poorly cast movie. The Euro babes in particular have zero charisma. While the location scouting and makeup effects stand out, neither the soft core debauchery, nor the hyped violence are particularly inspired either. The one exception is a gross-out moment involving pliers and a detached eyeball, but for the most part, the movie is all buildup and a big letdown.

For much of the final twenty minutes, any type of atmospheric dread is thrown aside in favor of would-be suspense, as Jay Hernandez sneaks his way out of the warehouse and out of the country. Much of this is shot like a Chuck Norris Delta Force flick, or worse, an episode of The A-Team. The movie never was never really on track to begin with, but flies off the cliff here.

Roth has demonstrated an infectious love of horror flicks, a lot of good ideas and what could be interpreted as either nerve, or naivete, simply throwing up whatever he thinks is cool on screen without second thought. For Roth’s next flick, I’d be interested in seeing what he can do with a good script and capable actors. Hostel is more like a training exercise until he gets there.