Written by Dave Younger
David (Sam Page) and Georgie (Natassia Malthe) are engaged. They go overseas, to Spain, to get the blessing of David’s father, Robert (Michael Maxwell). Georgie is abducted from a nightclub and becomes a sex slave for a twisted psycho known as the White Arab (David Gant, but because this is an ultra-cheap straight-to-DVD Hostel knockoff, his name is misspelled as Grant on the cover). Georgie’s fiancée discovers a guy whose sister was also kidnapped, and they make plans for a rescue. But there are lots of crazies, drug dealers, and corrupt officials they have to deal with first.
When Georgie first goes missing, David inquires of everyone, “Where is my girlfriend?” Everyone acts like he’s crazy, what girlfriend? People David and Georgie were talking to all night, including the nightclub’s owner, Marlon (Howard Marks), say there was no girlfriend. Only the worst movies sink to this tactic: the only way the plot can go forward is if everyone is completely stupid. At that point your suspension of disbelief goes away and you lose all hope of there being any redeeming features to the film.
Georgie tries to escape but finds it’s useless to resist. With all the mutilated naked floozies lying around, she tries to not become one of the victims. It’s tough to sit through her fighting for her life against these monsters, vomiting blood and having trouble breathing. What a load of crap this is. At 81 minutes, it’s just barely long enough to qualify as a movie, the acting is atrocious, and nothing really happens, so it’s not even enjoyable in a voyeuristic way. Lots of quick cutting ensures you can’t even see the sex, so I guess we’ll just have to hope for another installment of Hostel to find out what would really happen to women who were kidnapped and forced to be prostitutes.
Video
The aspect ratio is 1.78:1. Cinematography is bright, crisp, and colorful. Image quality is high. It’s nice to see that not all horror films have to be dark and murky.
Audio
The sound is Dolby Digital 5.1. This is very high quality audio, wide separation, and great use is made of the subwoofer. There is good balance between the front speakers and the surrounds. Dialog is easy to hear.
Special Features
A trailer. 3 minutes.
Final Thoughts
David runs around like a chicken with his head cut off for most of the film. And then there’s a quick and bloody climax where you can’t even really tell who’s doing what to whom, and it’s over. Forgettable. Horrifically, director Darryn Welch has remade his 2005 film Wish You Were Here, also starring all the main actors in the same roles. It shares Slave’s tagline: “They say there’s a moment in every person’s life. The moment the rest of your life will be judged by. But what if that moment happened and you weren’t even in the room?” Boy, I wish I hadn’t been in the room when Slave happened. Don’t let this happen to you.
