"Eli Roth's sequel manages to pile on the violence from the first film, without any of the mystery and excitement. The result: failure."
--Spoilers--
As you can tell by my overall quote, I liked the first Hostel better. In fact, the two films are drastically different. One encourages brutal violence, but keeps a mystery throughout and never really abuses the use of that violence. The other not only keeps all that violence, but piles it on tenfold while actually giving the people inflicting that violence some motive. Guess what? I don't need a motive. I was perfectly happy with the fact that people were paying to torture people out of some sick rush that they get. The first Hostel did a fine job of implying that this was a kind of business, where rich men pay big money to meet their torturous desires. Or, more to the point, Rick Hoffman's character did a fine job of implying that.
The second film does more than just imply. It tells a sub-story between two "clients" who have just paid to kill some girls. It pulls back the curtain, revealing a massive chain of torture factories and rich businessmen who bid through online auctions for their victim of choice. It's a bold and creative story element for a horror movie...but one that works better behind the curtain. Like Michael Myers, this torture operation works better as a "shape," a mysterious and important element that is never really given an origin. It's just there. People kill. People die. It works. But for some reason, Eli Roth, who shockingly wrote and directed BOTH of these films, felt the need to go in more detail about what this "business" does, and how it goes about recruiting clients and capturing victims. Sure, it was a good premise for a sequel, but one that is awfully presented on screen.
Like the first movie, Part II follows three people as they travel to the Slovakian hostel and ultimately find themselves at the mercy of the "elite hunting" program. Only this time, it's three girls, Beth(Lauren German), Lorna( Heather Matarazzo), and Whitney(Bijou Phillips), who are studying abroad in Italy when they're told by a super sexy lady about the "nice" hostel in Slovakia. To Roth's credit, these three girls are more likable then the three guys in the first film, and it's that much more depressing to see them go. BUT, the magic of the first film is lost to the trenches of utterly disgusting violence, even for a Hostel film.
Seriously, what the fuck was with the naked chick bathing in the pool of blood that's dripping from the body hanging above her? It was just pathetic and too grotesque, even by Roth's standards. The look at how different people "operate" was genuinely intriguing, but it took away from the mystery of the first, and ultimately made it feel more like supernatural horror than torture violence. The guy cutting off pieces of his victim and eating them? Cool, yeah. Was it necessary? No. Again, I'm fine with just a dark room and a person chained to a chair. I don't need to know if there's different "assortments" of rooms where a guy can sit at a dinner table with the candles lit while cannibalizing on some helpless individual. It totally takes away from the brutal realism the first rightly brought to the forefront.
The two men involved in the aforementioned sub-plot are Stuart(Roger Bart) and Todd(Richard Burgi). Stuart hates his homelife and his wife, and after Todd pressures him into accepting, he sees this as a chance to take his problems out on one of the girls he's "paid for." At first, it seems as if Stuart would help Beth escape. Roth quickly throws a curve ball and turns Stuart into a crazy, narcissistic, psycho who feels the need to demand respect by bludgeoning girls to death. The transformation is so quick, it's hardly believable. There was so many turns this movie could have gone down, and Roth chose to destroy the mystery the first film set up with an unrealistic and exploitative sequel, that, like Stuart, tries demanding some respect with disgusting violence.
Overall, it's hard to believe that this is from the same director as the first. Roth did a 180 with the story and made this film a forgettable failure. It has it's good moments, but I said "what the fuck?!" way too many times, and not in a good way...especially with the penis bit. Ugh.
Oh, and what he did to Paxton is just lazy.
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