"The Spanish answer to Hostel" boasts the sleeve of the DVD for H6. But whilst it's true that this film's relentless scenes of torture and violence might possibly appeal to the audiences of such modern horror, I suspect that fans of that particular franchise could feel cheated by the description used on the packaging. This isn't mainstream splatter for indiscriminate teens; it's a study of a psychotic serial killer that bears far more resemblance to a handful of other, perhaps lesser-known horror films than to the work of Eli Roth.Sure, certain aspects of director Martín Garrido Barón's brutal chiller can be compared to The Silence of the Lambs and the Saw films, but other parts are more reminiscent of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, American Psycho, The Last Horror Movie, nasty low-budget crap-fest Scrapbook, and even recent French shocker Martyrs. One thing is certain though: there's not a single sadistic East European in sight.Instead, there's a deranged Spaniard, with a plastic sheet covered room and a shiny new chainsaw ready for action.Said sicko is Antonio Frau (Fernando Acaso), who has recently been released from prison after serving 15 years for killing his girlfriend. Almost immediately after gaining his freedom, Antonio finds himself a wife (buxom nurse Rosa, who is desperate to escape life at her parents' home), inherits a rundown guest-house in a sleazy part of town, and begins writing a diary in which he catalogues every detail of his new hobby: killing drifters, prostitutes, pimps and junkies!While his wife is at work (she does the night-shift at a hospital, where she carries on her affair with a married doctor), Antonio is busy luring drug-addled hookers and other losers into his home, killing the men and taking the women to Room 6, where he 'purifies' them through repeated rape (amusingly 'working around' their knickers), torture, and finally, dismemberment. Meanwhile, the police inspector who previously arrested Antonio is hot on the case, and soon suspects that his old acquaintance is responsible for the area's lack of hookers.Very grim and brutal in tone, but surprisingly light on the explicit violence (plenty of blood, but not much graphic gore—not that it needs it to offend), H6 is definitely not a film for all the family (unless that family sits in armchairs made from human remains). The awful treatment to which Antonio subjects his victims is extremely harrowing, and is recommended viewing only for hardened horror fans who are numb to the sight of petrified young women pleading for their lives before being sawn into tiny pieces (some of which get served up as dinner for Rosa).The only thing that prevents H6 from being one of the best 'extreme' horrors to come out of Europe in recent years is the weak ending, which attempts to convince viewers that Antonio is a genius of Hannibal Lector proportions who has concocted a clever ruse to ensure that he receives a lighter than expected sentence. I can't help but feel that the film deserved a much more nihilistic denouement worthy of all that had gone before.7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb.

Antonio Frau is a cold-blooded killer.Frau has just been released from prison after serving 14 years for killing his girlfriend.He has inherited a run-down former brothel from a late aunt and married Francisca,who he met through a dating service and started writing to while inside.He lures prostitutes,most of them drug addicts,into his hotel at night where he ties them to a table,tortures and rapes them for days then cuts them into pieces using a chainsaw."H6:Diary of a Serial Killer" is occasionally pretty grim,but mostly uninteresting serial killer movie.It is not as extremely intense as my all time favourite Austrian "Angst",but there are some mildly shocking moments including rapes and chainsaw dismemberment.Fernado Acaso is pretty believable as a misogynistic killer and there is a bit of gore.Give it a look.

(Only minor spoilers except as noted).I've enjoyed a lot of Spanish cinema recently; both the actual Spanish cinema of people like Almodovar, and the Latin American cinema of directors like del Toro, whose superb "Devil's Backbone", set in Civil War Spain, was the finest horror film of the last decade. It's no surprise, then, that this film is both well-made, well-acted, and manages to sustain that distinctively different Spanish atmosphere. But it's also as nasty and pointless a film as one could hope not to have to see.What actually is the purpose of all this? We have no real idea what caused the creepy central character to embark on his killing spree, despite the fact that large amounts of narrative voice-over are drawn directly from his own narcissistic journal. In a routinely unpleasant opening sequence, set more than a decade earlier, we see the central character killing his girlfriend in a rage of jealousy and control-freakery ("…if I can't have you nobody can…."). Oddly enough, that is perhaps one of the best sequences in the film, but it has no discernible relation to his subsequent killing spree, which appears completely different in both motivation and execution. What happened to him in jail to cause this change? We have no idea, though we do later discover, as an absurd sort of afterthought, that he obtained a law degree while imprisoned.In Britain, in several of our notorious "serial killer" or "sex killer" cases, the terrible question arises; what about the wife? Did she know, or suspect what was going on? This is a question that this film could have asked, and indeed the wife does begin to emerge as one of the more intriguing characters. But banally, the answer to the question is quite clearly: "No, she didn't". Even when a dramatic opportunity like this is presented on a plate, the film still manages to bungle it. All we actually get, sketched perfunctorily out at the end, is her slightly amoral preparedness to cash in on the proceeds after the event. Compare this to the awful revelatory moment in Ten Rillington Place, where Christie's wife says "you know what I mean…." thereby sealing her own fate and allowing us an appalled glimpse into unimaginable chasms of suppressed knowledge and horror.(Major spoiler in this paragraph). In the meantime, we are supposed to believe that the killer himself is a criminal mastermind who comprehensively outwits the police, thereby securing the briefest of incarcerations in a mental hospital before being released so that he can kill again. How exactly did he achieve this? The plot gets extremely sketchy at this point; something to do with deliberately leaving certain clues for the police; but how this all works or why, or how the subsequent court case actually proceeds, remains a mystery.I actually don't believe serial killers are like this. The Silence of the Lambs may be comic book stuff, but – Lecter aside – it gets its serial killers right. They are deeply disturbed, deeply dysfunctional, deeply inadequate people; not the creepily charming mastermind presented here (closely related to the equally implausible suave killer of The Last Horror Movie, or indeed even Man Bites Dog, though it appears not to have been noticed that that was a satire).This film has little suspense, and bungles what little intrigue the plot might have generated. It has nothing useful to say about the motivations of serial killers, either generally, or in the specific cultural milieu of Spain. This is nothing more than a poorly plotted excuse to show some pretty misogynistic violence to women. And oddly, what makes that violence even more repulsive is a certain prissy failure of nerve even in how it is presented. The soft core character of what is actually shown just makes it seem even more repellently titillatory. Just one explicit shot, properly timed, would have been infinitely more shocking, and would have rendered all the rest completely unnecessary, freeing up more film time to flesh out the gaping holes in plot and characterisation. Instead we just get endless shots of young women vulnerably spreadeagled on a table in their pretty but slightly revealing underwear. Very, very creepy. I'm sorry to be rude; I love horror films, and can tolerate even the most extreme, to the extent even of worrying my partner. But I think anyone who finds this film good, or interesting, even I'd find myself edging away from. The purpose of a horror film is to scare you; this is just lascivious.It leaves a very bad taste in the mouth indeed. I have to give this film more than one star just because it's competently executed, but morally it deserves none at all and should never have been made.

I read some comments on the internet about this film like "...harder then Hostel...", "the camera never screens of when it's getting really brutal...". But none of them is true. The camera never screens of, because there is nothing to screen of. The same scene is repeated hundred and hundred times again. Women lies on a table, killer rapes women a few times, killer cuts women into pieces (you never see this during the whole film!). Police come and arrested him. Killer fools the jury. Film over. In Germany we would say :"Viel Lärm um Nichts". All in all, one of the most boring films I ever see. Absolutely non-recommendable.