Paradise Lost

Haw, Turistas? See Hostel? That’s you that is.

Seriously, it mostly is. It’s not quite as sadistic, not quite as sexually explicit, and features plenty of shots of gorgeous Brazilian scenery, but all the same folks are present: sexy women who can’t be trusted; crazed foreigners hellbent on extracting revenge on selfish, greedy American tourists; pretty, pretty boys and girls who are bound for the operating chair. Of course in this case the bad stuff is going down for a slightly more socially conscious reason: organ harvesting for an impoverished hospital rather than sadistic pleasure, but the doctor doing the job is hardly bemoaning his lot.

The cast do their jobs well. Olivia Wilde and Beau Garrett are the Best Friends on the holiday of a lifetime (gone wrong when the bus they took to save money rather than flying cross-country crashes), and Josh Duhamel is the stalwart and uptight Brother and Protector figure. Add a couple of intensely obnoxious London boys and an Australian woman who is perhaps the only truly likeable character and you have a fine collection of victims – enough so that a few can be tortured/shot/drowned/I-lost-track-of-what-was-happening-since-it-was-so-dark – and still have the requisite shell-shocked survivors left to quip to some fellow travellers who are considering bussing it: “Take the plane.”

If you are a fan of this sort of thing then it will no doubt appeal. If not, avoid.