Hostel: Part 2 (2007 film)

Category: Torture horror with comedic elements

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The first Hostel movie was always going to be a tough act to follow. A shame that it didn't win any Oscars, but bloody hell, it was quite a fun, decent movie. But how do Eli Roth and Quentin Tarantino fare second time around? Read on to find out.

Following on from the events of the first movie, this time we follow the (mis)adventures of three women - Beth, Whitney and Lorna, who befriend Axelle and end up in Slovakia after a train ride beforehand with some sleazy Italians. Wouldn’t you know it, they all end up in the same hostel from the previous movie where it now seems half the town is in on the act and the Elite Hunting Club have become a bigger and better operation that learned its lessons second time around - they now have a mobile-friendly bidding website and better locks on the doors.

Two of the three women are seduced into their capture and eventual deaths, but Beth, sensing that something isn't right, does her best to avoid the inevitable, in stark contrast to the first Hostel where Paxton managed to avoid capture through dumb luck and was eventually tricked in going to the warehouse. But through some quick thinking and fortuitous luck, Beth manages to turn the table on her captor and comes out looking like a badass.

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Having said all that and just watched it, yes, it's a good movie with some great bits, but I just felt the magic just wasn't there. Roth and Tarantino tried to be bigger and better, but in the end, the cake had too many ingredients.

In recollection, here are some things I liked and didn't like -

I liked:

The Paxton storyline - it was all too brief, and I really think they should have really played the story out where Paxton feels like he is never far from the Elite Hunting Club's reaches and continually moves and is constantly paranoid, and just when you think he's escaped their clutches, THEN the final scene of the movie is Paxton's head being delivered in a box, rather than being almost at the very start. Watching Jay Hernandez as someone paranoid and scared for his life while trying to live it makes me think he's an underutilised actor!

And related to the scene we end up getting, the jump cut between the discovery of the headless Paxton and the up-close shot of the motorbike from behind as it winds its way through European streets - VERY well done!

The touches of ridiculousness that permeate the movie - following on from the first Hostel, there are numerous scenes where you really can't help, but laugh. A few such highlights include:

- Paxton's headless body sitting in the kitchen while a cat licks up the blood. 

- The cannibal scene where an elderly gentleman is eating strips of flesh from a man's leg, and you see him take a piece of flesh off like it's literally bacon. 

- The castration scene at the end where Beth throws Stuart's dismembered member to the guard dogs.

- The scene where Todd pierces Whitney's face with an angle grinder and her long hair knots up the mechanism, leading to Todd wondering what he's doing while standing in front of a profusely bleeding and screaming Whitney. No doubt that Eli Roth has an uncanny ability to make comedic horror!

- Beth's character being a badass who senses the danger present and does her best to avoid being captured, eventually to no avail. She displays a great amount of intelligence that generally isn't found in horror movies, and the way she turns the tables at the end (especially with the unkindest cut of all) was very clever.

- Heather Matarazzo's performance as Lorna, the wet blanket of the trio. She played her role so well that it made me uncomfortable because her crying and snot-nosed performance reminded me of numerous people I've come across in my life.

Though I do want to point out some things I didn't like:

- This juxtaposition where, out of the three women, one woman gets killed by a female client who is in it for thrill of it, whereas the other two women are purchased by two men who end up with serious buyer's remorse, was the most egregious. That, to me, felt a little forced to the point of detriment.

And just on that, the woman who gets her rocks off by bathing in the blood of Lorna - truth be told that the human body, at most, has five litres of blood. That ain't much of a bath! And a pristine candlelit bath inside a disused factory used to dismember people? Umm...yeah....OK.

- The sudden expansion of the Elite Hunting Club's operations, and seeing more into the organisation - I dunno. I kinda liked it when it was local and mysterious because now there's all this talk of "contract" - "It's part of the contract!" is a line heard numerous times in various forms. I suppose that part of the story HAD to expand, but now the EHC come across as your typical bog-standard shadowy European organisation that we've seen in numerous other movies numerous times before.

- Beth's character switch - she spends so much time as a badass who uses her wit to avoid capture, then when she actually is captured, she sits there screaming like a baby. To me, the character should have remained stoic, especially when she saw it was Stuart who she was consigned to. After the initial screaming and crying, Beth goes back to badass mode.

- Then there is also Stuart's character switch - he starts off very hesitant, then after he kills a discounted Whitney, he comes back all misogynistic and plays does the old "thinking the woman in front of him is his wife" trope.

So with all that said, this movie isn't atrocious or horrible. It isn't. But I just don't think the magic of the first movie was there, and unfortunately, the failure of this movie to capture what made the first so good does diminish the score for this entry.

STAR RATING: 3.1/5