Silly turistas. You should have listened to Josh Duhamel. He’s the one who knew you should have taken a plane, he’s the one who didn’t trust the drinking water, and he’s the one who noticed something fishy with the passports in the drawer. Most importantly, he knew from the outset the one most important rule of cheap horror movies: never trust the locals. Anywhere. Ever. If you’d listened to him, you wouldn’t have been mercilessly slaughtered, and, more importantly, I’d have my hour and a half back without having to watch such a surprisingly boring, terrible movie.

“Turistas” is the next in an increasingly long (see also: tedious) line of horror flicks seeking to cash in on the trends started by “Hostel” and the “Saw” series. In fact, the movie could easily be described as Hostel in South America, where it’s Brazilians instead of Europeans that can’t wait to cut right into those greedy ugly Americans. The plot is almost identical: a group of tourists find a secret paradise nestled away in the middle of a foreign land, and soon find that that paradise is a front for an evil murder ring put on by the not-so-good people of the local community.

Problem is, the man in charge “Turistas” missed the point of “Hostel”— it was something of an experiment in gore-voyeurism, forcing the viewer to uncomfortably watch scenes where individuals took great pleasure in the graphic torture of others. “Turistas,” on the other hand, is just a dull, dirty movie where several tourists wander into the apparent abyss that Brazil is and get killed off while nobody, especially the audience, really cares.

Josh Duhamel leads the cast of television throwaways as they party, swim, drink, and have their kidneys removed on their leisure trip to South America. His Alex is annoyingly cognizant of what’s going on around him as, like the audience, he knows something is not quite right. Unlike his audience, he would have the power to do something about it, but doesn’t—after all, if they were to leave right away like he wishes there would be no killings, right?

None of the “protagonists” are particularly likeable, as they tend to adhere to all those ugly stereotypes that American tourists get secretly murdered abroad by local people. Since often in horror flicks the audience is meant to root for the killer and take delight in each successive kill, that would have been okay, but the villain of the film is handled so clumsily that no one ends up rooting for either side. Some of the best horror villains are at their scariest when they clearly believe that what they’re doing is morally right, and can make the audience almost agree in some ways. “Turistas’” villain acts like such a character, but all his righteousness-cred is snuffed out early on when he inexplicably (to the point of being comical) pokes out the eye of one of his employees with a skewer.

Apparently director John Stockwell doesn’t understand that a gritty, handheld camera alone doesn’t automatically make for a stylish filmmaking technique. While it was probably meant to create an atmosphere of dread, his ugly, cheap camerawork just makes the movie look ugly and cheap. It goes without saying that a sickle being run through someone’s foot is not going to look pretty, but Stockwell even manages to turn the lush jungles and tropical beaches of his environment into something totally unattractive. It’s as if he meant to create juxtaposition between the beauty of the area and the repulsiveness of its inhabitants, but he forgot to flip his camera’s “ugly” switch to “pretty” in between scenes.

Worst of all, this horror movie features no real scary scenes. There are several disgusting ones (though nowhere near enough to satisfy gore-hounds), a couple jump-at-cha startles, and several chase scenes drawn out to loooooong lengths in an effort to build suspense that turns them into something more closely resembling bad action sequences. “Turistas” is a mess—it has no idea what it wants to say but says it anyway, and it desperately tries to be a scary movie without a clue as to how to do such. And don’t think it falls into so-bad-it’s-good territory: it’s just bad.

It’s bad. The kind of horror movie that even people who love all horror movies (such as this reviewer) can’t even begin to enjoy.