HOSTEL
R, 95 minutes

The first two acts of Eli Roth’s “Hostel” are a tedious struggle. For almost an hour, Mr. Roth disguises his film as a runof-the-mill Teen Sex movie complete with bong jokes and a bevy of silicone breasts, leading to the sinking feeling that he has produced another “cute” horror film like his 2002 debut “Cabin Fever.” But in the last half-hour, “Hostel” becomes a successful exercise in uncompromising sadism: It features decapitations, amputations, suicides, and slit throats.

By film’s end, there is not a single character – alive or dead – whose body is fully intact. The carnage is voyeuristic and unrestrained, but these are the excessive methods necessary if horror is to return to its golden age of the late 20th century.

Horror is a genre that tends to be misogynistic over anything else, but here Mr. Roth makes the majority of his victims helpless males. The cast is led by Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, and Eythor Gudjonsson, who star as three post-college friends backpacking across Europe before adulthood forces them to settle down. While in Amsterdam, they are tipped off to a secret youth hostel in Slovakia that is the best location to satisfy their indulgences. Eventually they learn that this hostel sells its inhabitants to an underground dungeon, where wealthy sociopaths pay to dismember and exterminate their unknowing victims.

Intense and at times unsettling (there are scenes where blood and pus flow like water), “Hostel” is an inevitable response to the watered-down PG-13 horror films that have been forced on audiences in recent years. Mr. Roth’s “Hostel” may not be the apex of quality of this movement, but his sophomore effort is a step in the right direction.