Three Americans lead Alex (Josh Duhamel), his sister Bea (Olivia Wilde) and her best friend Amy (Beau Garrett) are vacationing in Brazil when the bus that they take whips out and careens off of a cliff. Thankfully everyone gets out in time and there are no fatalities. Soon, the three of them find out about a beach nearby with a bar and, seeing as the replacement bus isn't going to be here any time soon, they head off in search of said cantina. Along the way they pair up with two British guys named Finn (Desmond Askew) and Liam (Max Brown) and a pretty Australian girl named Pru (Melissa George).After a quick jaunt through the jungle our five tourists find the beachside watering hole and meet a Swedish couple who have taken their motorcycle across the continent only to wind up here. The group decides that they don't care if they miss the bus, and they start drinking. The locals move in as night surrounds them, and a friendly local guy named Kiki (Agles Steib), who is learning English, starts chatting them up. The kids all get out and shake it on the dance floor, Liam gets it on with a local prostitute, and soon everything gets blurry. The wake up the next morning and all of their possessions are gone: wallets, passports, luggage – it's all missing.

The group moves on and finds a nearby village. They ask the locals where they can find a police station but they're given the runaround. This initially confuses them until they notice that one of the kids is wearing Finn's hat and that parked beside one of the houses is the Swedes' motorbike. An altercation ensues and soon enough, a local kid has been hit with a rock. Fearing for their lives, Kiki leads them through the jungle to a place he says is his uncle's home, the only place where they'll be safe. The next bus comes in two days, and if they hang around the village the angry locals will make short of them. The problem is that the locals, Kiki included, know a lot more about what's in store for these unwitting travelers than they do, and this will prove to be a very long wait indeed...

The obvious point of comparison for Turistas is Eli Roth's Hostel. They were both in theaters around the same time and they both play with the same basic concept – tourists in a foreign territory in trouble with the locals. Aside from that, however, the films are fairly different. The main difference is that in Hostel it's difficult to like any of the characters. They're more or less annoying frat boys who live up to the obnoxious stereotype, and they're very shallow characters. In Turistas the characters are still fairly shallow but they're not nearly as annoying. You don't dislike the tourists here the same way that you do in Hostel and that gives the inevitable finale a bit more impact and a bit more suspense. It isn't difficult to figure out where it's all going and the movie breaks very little new ground, but it is at least effective in making the audience hope that at least a few of these poor saps make it out alive. Again, the characters are fairly one dimensional, so don't go in expecting much in the way of depth (they're all typically 'beautiful people' in that the guys are all buff and the girls are all gorgeous and slender) but they don't seem like anyone you'd run away from if you were to find yourself at a party with them.

The film was shot on location in Brazil and while it may not do wonders for Brazilian tourism, it does give us a chance to enjoy some exotic locations and lush jungle scenery. Many horror films are set within the treacherous confines of a traditional North American forest so it's interesting to see what is very close to a backwoods slasher placed in a South American jungle. The film also does a decent job of not shying away from the poverty that affects large areas of Brazil, particularly when they tourists are on the bus and when they find themselves searching for help in the small town. There's nothing here on the level of what you see in City Of God but at least the camera doesn't try to gloss over this, and it serves to give the antagonists a bit more motivation than they would have had otherwise in that we can understand how people who live in abject poverty might be driven to more drastic measures than those who are provided for. The film also makes use of some great underwater footage and nifty shots filmed inside a cave to add some more nice scenery to the mix.

Director John Stockwell (yes, the same John Stockwell who starred in John Carpenter's Christine!) directs the movie with a fair bit of style and keeps the pacing tight. He wisely saves the more disturbing set pieces until the film's final half hour using the first two thirds of the film to drop none-so-subtle hints and prepare us for what is to come. Again, no one is reinventing the wheel with this film but it definitely delivers a few memorably nasty kill scenes and it does so in an interesting location. We get some skin, we get some solid gore, and the movie delivers a few superficial jumps scares that, while not really lasting, keep the tone right. Horror fans should enjoy this one as a decent time killer, even if its unlikely make its way to anyone's favorite films list.

NOTE: Fox's DVD is a 'flipper' in that it contains the R-rated cut of the film on one side and the un-rated cut on the other side. The difference in the running time between the two versions is two-minutes (93:18 for the R, versus 935:46 for the un-rated version) in total and the main differences between the two cuts are that the un-rated one is noticeably gorier (mainly during the one stand out gore scene in the film) and a little bit sexier (the scene with the prostitute) than its MPAA approved counterpart.

Video:

Turistas hits DVD in a decent 2.35.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that looks quite good. Color reproduction looks accurate and although there is some mild edge enhancement and a bit of shimmering present in some scenes there are no issues with mpeg compression artifacts or print damage at all. Flesh tones look lifelike and natural and the black levels stay pretty strong. Detail is good in both the background and the foreground of the picture and sharpness was fine.