lodging house (2005) follows two college students named Paxton and Josh who backpack through Europe with their Icelandic friend Oli. On the way to Amsterdam, they meet a young man named Alexei who tells them about an unregistered inn in Slovakia where there are many beautiful women. The three friends decide to go there. But, as the boys discover, this place has more than just beautiful women. He has a deep, dark secret that will make them wish they had stayed away.

What is at the base of most of the experiences of this film are the forbidden pleasures. Two college boys are lured into an unlisted dorm in Slovakia with the promise of beautiful women and, later, sex. The girls who seduce them and the young man who takes them there do so with the promise of a hefty cash reward. Rich men who pay for the experience of torturing boys are there to play out their deepest, darkest fantasies.

Yew Saw (2004) introduced movie audiences to what many American film critics termed “torture porn”, lodging house expanded the concept without restrictions. For those of my readers who don’t fully understand what torture porn is, it’s basically a movie that features a lot of blood and gore for the sheer thrill of the viewer, quite similar to the sex scenes. Saw it showed a lot of gore with some moral restraint of having the antagonist “Jigsaw” secretly hoping the victim would survive and become a better person because of it. This movie, on the other hand, is all about torture. It is about money and forbidden pleasures, as stated above. There is no moral leash for this movie.

My final takeaway about this movie is that it’s not something you should get into the habit of watching frequently. But it’s a decent movie if viewed in moderation.

To emit: Jay Hernandez as Paxton, Derek Richardson as Josh, Eythor Gudjonsson as Oli, Barbara Nedeljakova as Natalya, Jan Vlasak as the Dutch businessman, and Jana Kaderabkova as Svetlana.