Todd's fate SPOILER

The more I think of it, the more I tend to think Todd's breakdown is the strongest scene in the movie.

Todd's breakdown makes an exception to the very unsettling total lack of compassion that all clients and employees of Elite Hunting display. I think this is very clever because it emphasizes the brutality and cruelty of the whole thing better than 10 more minutes of gore could have. He is the only one who shows us how a normal human being would and should react to the kind of violence that happens there. Todd of all people!

I also disagree with the poster before you - he didn't break down out of fear for his own life. That might have been part of it, but judging from the way he told off the guard, he didn't give a damn about what Elite Hunting thought. He broke down over what he had done to Whitney and could never undo. When he's on his hands and knees, he coughs as if he was about to throw up. He just can't deal with what he has done. He's disgusted and appalled.

Todd is very much like a child in some ways. A child who annoys his parents into taking him to that cool rollercoaster, feels all strong and important on the way there and then starts to cry the moment the car starts moving. The way he celebrated when he won the bid, the way he made fun of Whitney crying - very childlike. He only really understood what he was into when it was too late.

Also, the scene where he talks to Stuart about how people who have killed somebody have that menacing air of strength about them that everyone notices but nobody can put their finger on. He's basically saying that he wants to be tough. He wants to get rid of all insecurity, which only makes sense when we assume that there is some inside him. Again that makes me think of a little boy, wanting to be tough, wanting to be a cowboy. And since there is always some debate on gender stereotypes and roles surrounding Hostel, I might add that this would be an important problem men (and by extension, sometimes their victims) have to deal with - the world expects them to be tough.

It's a little regrettable that Todd was disposed of so quickly, although I don't know either how his storyline could have continued. As someone said above, Elite Hunting cannot want businessmen going missing whose friends and relatives have a ton of money and connections they can use looking for them. Worse, Whitney would have died in 20 minutes, and for Beth it was somehow okay to leave the room while the victim was still alive and let him die on his own. They could have allowed Todd the same thing without breaking the contract. So them killing him off like that doesn't seem entirely plausible. But I don't want to nitpick. I just wanted to say that he's probably the most interesting character in the movie, and the breakdown scene was really intense in a brilliant way.