Summaries

Synopsis

In Amsterdam, American backpackers Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and Josh (Derek Richardson) and Icelander Óli (Eyþór Guðjónsson) meet Alexei (Lubomir Bukovy), a Russian man who tells them about a Slovak hostel filled with American-loving local women. The backpackers board a train to Slovakia, where they meet a Dutch businessman (Jan Vlasák) long enough to be unnerved by his bizarre behavior. Upon arriving in the small village, the backpackers check into the local hostel and find themselves sharing a room with Natalya (Barbara Nedeljáková) and Svetlana (Jana Kadeábková), two attractive, single women who entice the backpackers to a spa, where the women await nude in a sauna. They invite the men to a disco that night and dance and drink with them for a few hours. Josh himself is uneasy about hooking up with either of them since he'd recently gone through a bad breakup. He leaves the club for a few minutes and is suddenly accosted by a small group of kids who demand gum and candy. The Dutch businessman appears and gives the kids money and sharply orders them to leave. Josh is grateful and offers to buy him a drink in the club. Later, Natalya & Svetlana take Josh and Paxton back to their room and have sex with them.

The next morning, Óli seems to be missing. A young Japanese backpacker named Kana (Jennifer Lim) also reports that her friend Yuki (Keiko Seiko) has also disappeared. An MMS photo sent from Yuki's phone shows Yuki and Óli beneath a smokestack of an abandoned factory, with the word "Sayonara" written beneath it. Unbeknownst to Josh and Paxton, Oli has been decapitated and Yuki tortured, and (presumably) killed, a strange, hulking man taking the picture & sending it with Oli's phone. Paxton and Josh decide to leave Bratislava with Kana the following day. They spot a man wearing Oli's jacket walking nearby and follow him to a museum of medieval torture relics. Paxton later notices that in the MMS photo of Oli, Yuki and the smokestack is faked. Later that night, while partying with Natalya and Svetlana, Paxton and Josh succumb to the effects of alcohol. Josh stumbles back to the hostel and is put in his bed by the female concierge. After a few seconds, an unidentified person enters the room. Paxton passes out in the disco's storage room, mistaking it for the men's room.

Hours later, Josh wakes up handcuffed to a chair in a dungeon-like room surrounded by power tools and weapons. The Dutch businessman enters in a leather apron and gloves and begins torturing Josh, drilling him in his pecs just above his nipples and several spots in his thighs, despite Josh's screams of pain and his begging to be let go. After he is done, the Dutch Business man sits down and talks to Josh, explaining his unfulfilled dreams of being a surgeon due to his trembling hands. Josh begs to be released, the businessman then cuts Josh's Achilles' tendon. Josh tries to walk and collapses. His torturer lets him crawl towards the door before finally grabbing him, dragging him before a scummy mirror and slashing his throat with a scalpel.

Across town, Paxton awakens and returns to the hostel to find both Josh and Kana missing. In his room are a different pair of beautiful women inviting him to a spa, eerily similar to Natalya's and Svetlana's offer from before. When the local police chief (Miroslav Táborský) proves unhelpful, Paxton locates Natalya and Svetlana at an obscure bar and demands to be taken to an "art show" where he thinks his friends are. They drive to a factory on the outskirts of the town. Natalya's demeanor has changed from friendly to aloof and unsociable -- she mocks him a bit for being and American tourist. She leads him inside and down an eerie corridor where, in a dirty cell-like room, Paxton sees the Dutch businessman cutting up Josh's dead body. Horrified, he berates Natalya, who laughs at him, telling him "they" pay her to lure tourists to the factory. He is ambushed by thugs who drag him past cells filled with other backpackers being tortured by various clients.

Paxton is taken to his own cell and handcuffed to a chair, joined minutes later by a German client (Petr Jani) who tortures him, first using a gardening claw and then pointing a gun at him to frighten him. Distracted by Paxton's ability to plead for his life in German, the client calls in one of the factory's hulking guards to put a ball-gag in Pax' mouth and tries to kill him with a chainsaw, but before he can begin Paxton starts vomiting, either out of fear or because the gag was choking him. Due to his ball-gag, he starts to choke on his own vomit, and the client quickly removes the ball-gag, probably to stop Paxton dying before he could kill him. He then approaches Pax again with the chainsaw, but inadvertently saws off Paxton's ring and pinky finger before slipping on the ball-gag which he just threw on the floor. The client drops the chainsaw on his own leg and severs it.

With his fingers severed, Paxton is able to slip his hand from the cuff, grabs the client's pistol and shoots the man dead. When the guard comes to check on the situation, Paxton, having returned to his original sitting position and appearing unconscious, shoots and kills the guard. He grabs his fingers, disguises himself with a torturer's apron, and dons a metal mask before slipping out into the corridor. He hides in a nearby room to avoid capture from other guards, where he finds a collection of victims. He hides under a pile of body parts on a cart before he is taken to a room where he sees dead bodies being chopped up by a hulking, silent butcher; one of the corpses is Josh's. The butcher also loots the victims for valuables and piles the body parts into a tray to toss them into a large cremation oven. Paxton kills the butcher with a hammer and escapes to the surface where he then peers outside to see police officers conspiring with the factory men.

Paxton slips into a locker room and dresses himself in the clothes of a client, pulling a glove over his mutilated hand, and discovers a business card for Elite Hunting, now revealed as a secret, worldwide, murder-for-profit organization that charges ascending rates for Slovakians, Europeans, and most of all for Americans, who carry a fee of $25,000 for the opportunity to torture them. A somewhat crazed American businessman (Rick Hoffman) arrives and believing Paxton to be another client, discusses his intended victim and asks Paxton whether to kill her quickly or slowly. Paxton advises administering a quick death, but the American businessman disagrees and decides to resort to torturing her, leaving behind a no longer needed firearm before exiting. Paxton steals the pistol and escapes to the courtyard when he hears a woman scream. Unable to ignore it, he returns to the factory and kills the American, now in the middle of mutilating Kana's face and preparing to burn her with a blowtorch. Kana's right eye is hanging out of her injured face -- Paxton cuts it off and they run outside.

Paxton and Kana steal a car and head to the railway station, spotting Alexei, Natalya and Svetlana on their way from the original hostel. Paxton vengefully runs them over, killing Svetlana and Alexei. Natalya survives the initial collision but is run over by Pax and Kana's pursuers. Pax sees the gang of kids and notices that he is in the same car that he was driven in to the "art show", which has a bag of candy in it. The gang then kills the people chasing Paxton, having been bribed with the bag of candy. At the railway station, Kana notices the disfigured reflection of her missing eye and her tortured face, and, unable to live with her hideous scars, throws herself into the path of an incoming train, distracting the guards and allowing Paxton to escape aboard another train.

Once aboard, Paxton hears the familiar voice of Josh's torturer, the Dutch businessman. As the train stops in Vienna, Austria, Paxton slyly follows him to a public restroom and throws the Elite Hunting's card under his stall. When the Dutch businessman reaches down to pick it up, Paxton grabs his hand and, using a scalpel, cuts off the same fingers he lost during his escape. He then breaks into the stall and nearly drowns the Dutch businessman in the toilet bowl, allowing time for him to recognize Paxton, before slitting his throat, killing him. Paxton then leaves to board another train out of Austria.

(Source: WikiPedia)