Three American girls (Lauren German, Bijou Phillips, Heather Matarrazzo) on holiday in Europe are enticed to Slovakia by an Italian girl they've met on their travels, who is setting them up for their torture and deaths by the organisation set up to allow sickos to indulge in this.
Eli Roth's follow up to his disturbing and gory film of 2005 delivers much of the same in terms of extreme gore and a desire to shock, if not offend audiences. However, it does explore a concept only touched on in the first film. But first the gore.
The potentially most offensive scene involves the naked woman who lies in a tub beneath a naked, strung upside down Matarrazzo. She precedes to slash her back from side to side revelling in the blood that pours down and eventually drenches her whilst she gets off. This scene is perhaps inspired by Countess Dracula (1972), where the lead bathes in the blood of murdered virgins, as here Matarrazzo is presented as a naïve virgin. The final scene of gore involves a man's penis being sliced off in full view before being thrown to dogs which pays homage to various Italian cannibal films of the 70s and 80s (e.g. Cannibal Ferox 1980) where the mutilation of genitals was almost standard. However, what's more disturbing than the violence in Hostel 2 (like the first film), except fleshed out here much further, is the depiction of the rich, around the world, bidding on German, Phillips and Matarrazzo via the Internet for the 'privilige' to torture and kill them. This is a more grim extension of the concept explored in The Most Dangerous Game (1932), but somehow feels more realistic and possible today. That such people exist is likely (aside from whether such a thing has actually happened in the real world or not) and this is what makes it disturbing. How far and how low would some people be willing to go? Roth is going for a comment on the evils of excess and rampant capitalism gone mad. The fact that we follow two of the winning bidders (two American businessman), one all talk, the other seemingly hesitant and in two minds about what he's agreed to, brings the film a decidedly different approach than the first film. However, somehow Hostel 2 is ultimately not as good(at least for me). Perhaps it's the lack of real mystery and surprise that the first film had and that none of the three lead characters are particularly likable. Hence, we don't particularly care for them and it's almost annoying that German escapes because she's wealthy. Of course, this is a further comment that Roth wants to make about capitalism, but the point is laboured by this stage. A nice touch (as the first film did with Takashi Miike) is the cameo by Ruggero Deodato, director of Cannibal Holocaust (1980), as a cannibal. A must for fans of gore. Others will no doubt wonder why such films are allowed to exist.
Eli Roth's follow up to his disturbing and gory film of 2005 delivers much of the same in terms of extreme gore and a desire to shock, if not offend audiences. However, it does explore a concept only touched on in the first film. But first the gore.
The potentially most offensive scene involves the naked woman who lies in a tub beneath a naked, strung upside down Matarrazzo. She precedes to slash her back from side to side revelling in the blood that pours down and eventually drenches her whilst she gets off. This scene is perhaps inspired by Countess Dracula (1972), where the lead bathes in the blood of murdered virgins, as here Matarrazzo is presented as a naïve virgin. The final scene of gore involves a man's penis being sliced off in full view before being thrown to dogs which pays homage to various Italian cannibal films of the 70s and 80s (e.g. Cannibal Ferox 1980) where the mutilation of genitals was almost standard. However, what's more disturbing than the violence in Hostel 2 (like the first film), except fleshed out here much further, is the depiction of the rich, around the world, bidding on German, Phillips and Matarrazzo via the Internet for the 'privilige' to torture and kill them. This is a more grim extension of the concept explored in The Most Dangerous Game (1932), but somehow feels more realistic and possible today. That such people exist is likely (aside from whether such a thing has actually happened in the real world or not) and this is what makes it disturbing. How far and how low would some people be willing to go? Roth is going for a comment on the evils of excess and rampant capitalism gone mad. The fact that we follow two of the winning bidders (two American businessman), one all talk, the other seemingly hesitant and in two minds about what he's agreed to, brings the film a decidedly different approach than the first film. However, somehow Hostel 2 is ultimately not as good(at least for me). Perhaps it's the lack of real mystery and surprise that the first film had and that none of the three lead characters are particularly likable. Hence, we don't particularly care for them and it's almost annoying that German escapes because she's wealthy. Of course, this is a further comment that Roth wants to make about capitalism, but the point is laboured by this stage. A nice touch (as the first film did with Takashi Miike) is the cameo by Ruggero Deodato, director of Cannibal Holocaust (1980), as a cannibal. A must for fans of gore. Others will no doubt wonder why such films are allowed to exist.