Hostel Part II (2007) Directed by Eli Roth
There really isn’t an argument that the Saw series made the “torture porn” genre into a sensation. Probably the second most notable series in the genre is the Hostel series created by Eli Roth. These movies are effected because you feel that something like this could happen and is most likely happening somewhere in the world, people are fucked up, lets face it. After the success of the first Hostel movie, a sequel was a no brainer really, but did it bring a new side to the story? Did it have the same impact as the original? Well, not quite, but kind of, lets dive in.
The original is about a group of guys backpacking in Europe, they hear from a guy at a Hostel about crazy parties and hot chicks in Slovakia. So of course the three horny dudes take the stranger’s advice and go. From there they get captured and tortured by rich men that pay an organization to do so. That’s the gist of it, and there isn’t really much different in the sequel. The main difference is this time around they are girls studying abroad. They go to the same hostel and get kidnapped by the same organization.
Just like the original the gore is crazy, its very graphic and pretty realistic. A lot of the scenes really make you cringe and look away in disgust. Much like all the other Eli Roth movies there are always characters that are just deplorable and over the top. We get that here with the main antagonist Stuart. He starts off as a decent guy but you end up seeing the monster that lives inside him. The acting is pretty decent and the actor playing Stuart really does a good job playing a surprisingly complex character for such a dark and mean movie. The girls are basically stereotypes, you have Lorna the annoyingly weird girl, Whitney the slutty party girl, and Beth our main final girl whom is tough and levelheaded. There are some return characters, small characters like the deskman from the first movie at the hostel.
Every thing is rather grungy and disturbing in lighting and tone. You almost feel like you need a bath after watching it. Hostel II almost makes you hate people, there really only are a couple decent human beings aside from the girls. Even Whitney is a questionable character. You get to see more of the organizations building and how they run their business. Basically rich and fucked up people bid on people they want to torture and murder. The bidding scene is disturbing because of how nonchalant the guys are, some are playing golf with friends, having breakfast with their kids, and others are just sitting at work. The movie does a good job of getting their point across that the people bidding are just beyond horrible.
All in all, the movie really is just a rehashing of the first one. Not much has changed other than the gender of the main characters. You get to see more into why people are captured and why people are there to torture them. If you want to see brutal torture and gore, then this is a good movie for you. If you are looking for an intellectually engaging movie that leaves you thinking at the end about what happened, then you should probably look elsewhere. I can’t necessarily say this is a bad movie, nor is it a great movie. Hostel II is just kind of there, the series really should’ve stopped after this, but alas they made a third. Hostel Part III is just awful, plain awful. I guess you really can’t expect much from a movie that shouldn’t have existed. I would give Hostel Part 2 a C. I have seen plenty worse in the torture porn subgenre, but this doesn’t live up to the first one in my opinion.
