Review: Hostel: Part II

by Ryan Stewart Jun 8th 2007 // 9:02AM

Filed under: Horror, New Releases, Lionsgate Films, Theatrical Reviews, New in Theaters, Remakes and Sequels




The premise of Hostel: Part II is that life isn't cheap -- it's worth at least as much as a luxury vacation or a new sailboat. Early on, the film introduces us to two American men, both late 30s to early 40s with the look of wealthy dot.com entrepreneurs, and reveals that they are both clients of the sinister network we learned about in the first Hostel. That is to say, along with other successful sociopaths, they take part in secret online auctions where the prize is a captured holidaymaker that they can torture to death at a private facility in Slovakia. Once the credit card clears -- I wonder what it says on the billing statement? -- the client is invited to come to the facility and experience the thrill of unleashing their inner sadist on an innocent. Much like a brothel might try to sell you sex toys while you're there, the Hostel facility is fully stocked with a large array of torture instruments to choose from. You can imagine Aaron Eckhart's character from In the Company of Men loving this place.

The victims this time around are Beth (Lauren German), Whitney (Bijou Phillips) and Lorna (harlequin-faced actress Heather Matarazzo) all of them riding around on a Eurail pass for one reason or another. Although director Eli Roth is mature enough not to clog up the early portions of the film with pointless 'boo' moments, he does give us enough reaction shots from creepy-looking Europeans on the train and around the town square to make it seem like all of Slovakia is in on the scheme to capture these American babes and pack them off to the slaughterhouse. By the time they are finally betrayed by the one person who was nice to them -- a Slovak beauty played by Vera Jordanova -- it's hardly a surprise. Still, the early scenes of Hostel: Part II are sufficiently atmospheric and tense, and there's never a question that you're in the hands of a capable director. Even the slobbering gore-hounds in the first row should be entertained enough during the lengthy set-up to not be checking their watches.

There are lots of opportunities for jokes in these early scenes, and Roth is a very jokey guy in person, so its kind of impressive that there's such a cap on humor -- there are hardly any laugh lines in the opening act, which ends up being a good choice. There is, however, a weird subplot established early on that I can only imagine we're supposed to find funny, although I just found it to be distracting and nonsensical. It involves a gang of little Slovak kids -- called 'the bubblegum gang' in the credits -- who are, if I read things correctly, at odds with the film's bad guys. The bubblegum gang randomly attacks and annoys people in the area, whereas the organizers of the Hostel want things calm and quiet around the vicinity of their murder factory, so that's a problem. It all leads to a questionable scene that some people in the audience will undoubtedly have a problem with, but I didn't -- I was just ready to move on from the whole 'bubblegum' plot by that point.

The question you'd probably most like me to answer is whether Roth eventually 'pushes the envelope' once the main carnage gets going, but I'm not sure I can give you a straight yes or no. There are some gruesome set-ups, for sure, including one in which a visibly nude Matarazzo is hoisted upside down and hacked at with a scythe so that her female 'buyer' can lay down in a tub beneath and writhe in ecstasy as the blood rains down on her. Good acting and the bold sexual element make that one pretty tough, but that's probably the scene that most threatens the R-rating, and it happens fairly early. Eventually you start to notice that the further Roth goes, the more he's constrained by the R -- his cutaways start to get more jarring and the gore becomes more implied than actually witnessed. Roth is a little too keyed into how the MPAA thinks in general -- he's eager to put in scenes of 'victims fighting back' and other little sops towards correct moral thinking, as defined by the ever-vigilant ratings board.

The good news is that he's also really good at working around his limitations -- the best scene in Hostel: Part II ends up not being a scene of straight-ahead physical torture at all, but a weird dance of psychological and sexual torture. One of the two American men that I mentioned up top is positioned in the film as the reluctant one of the pair, never quite sure that this whole 'murder vacation' is such a good idea, but once he actually steps into the torture chamber with his victim, the other side of his 'sensitive man' persona comes barreling out in an impressively sick way. If the rest of the film was as well thought-out as that scene, we'd be looking at a horror masterpiece. As it is, Hostel: Part II is pretty much what you expect -- some cheap thrills and clever gags from the new golden boy and a couple of toes put briefly over the line before being yanked back. And horror fans will really get a kick out of the cannibal who shows up for a cameo.

25 Comments

Tags: bijou phillips, BijouPhillips, eli roth, EliRoth, heather matarazzo, HeatherMatarazzo, hostel, lauren german, LaurenGerman

  • Print this

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

| 1 | 2 | Most Recent | Next 20 Comments