I am not one of the hundreds or thousands of people who will watch Hostel II this weekend. For whatever reason, my nervous system isn't equipped to handle horror movies. And the recent "gorno" (gore/porno) genre is no exception. How to begin to understand Eli Roth, the director of Cabin Fever and the Hostel films? In an MTV interview, he said that the goal of Hostel II is to "build the scariest, baddest, nastiest roller-coaster in the amusement park." This explanation is at odds with what he has said in articles like this one about his films being political commentary on U.S.-backed torture at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. Pure entertainment or harsh political satire?

And what's with Roth's claim that Hostel II is a "feminist horror movie?" I guess he's referring to the castration scene that occurs somewhere in the flick. Maybe Roth is trying to critique sexualized violence against women, but if so, I doubt that his mostly teenage audiences appreciate this fine nuance. I happened to hear Eli Roth on the radio show Loveline recently, and he sounded like the most charming, eloquent man you can imagine until he encouraged guys to go see Hostel II because he intentionally put a lot of naked women in it. There were apparently lots of naked men (having sex with naked women) in the first movie. I have to agree with David Edelstein on the "vicious nihilism" of torture porn. Maybe a lot of deep thought is being put into these movies, but the nudity, unimaginable gore, and despair is all that registers in the minds of the young target audiences who see them.