HOSTEL: PART II
(director/writer: Eli Roth; cinematographer: Milan Chadima; editor: George Folsey Jr.; music: Nathan Barr; cast: Lauren German (Beth), Roger Bart (Stuart), Heather Matarazzo (Lorna), Bijou Phillips (Whitney), Richard Burgi (Todd), Vera Jordanova (Axelle), Milan Knazko (Sasha), Stanislav Ianevski (Miroslav), Milda Jedi Havlas (Desk Clerk Jedi), Edwige Fenech (Art Class Professor), Jay Hernandez (Paxton); Runtime: 94; MPAA Rating: R; producers: Mike Fleiss/Mr. Roth/Chris Briggs; Lionsgate; 2007)
“The kind of exploitative and sadistic pic that should appeal to the sensibilities of Al-Quaeda or Quentin Tarantino or just plain fake snuff film voyeurs.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
A gross-out sicko horror film with no redeeming value. It’s the sequel to the Splat Pack bad boy Eli Roth’s (“Cabin Fever”) revolting “Hostel,” that revisits the same torture chamber in Slovakia where rich American men pay for the right to kill American captives. This time it features the girls getting tortured instead of the boys. It’s the kind of exploitative and sadistic pic that should appeal to the sensibilities of Al-Quaeda or Quentin Tarantino or just plain fake snuff film voyeurs.
Three American college coeds, Lorna (Heather Matarazzo), Beth (Lauren German) and Whitney (Bijou Phillips), are taking an art course in Rome. Lorna’s the annoying geeky ugly duckling, Beth is the sensible regular gal with the handy trust fund and Whitney is the drunken loose woman. They journey next by train to Prague, but get steered to Slovakia by their shady art class model (Vera Jordanova), who clues them in about the great spas there. The unsuspecting girls check into a hostel and are snatched one by one by a cutthroat group, who sport a dog’s hound tattoo on their arm. They torture them and keep them in a locked cell, and the two obnoxious wealthy American businessmen, the macho bachelor Todd (Richard Burgi) and the sulking suburban family man Stuart (Roger Bart), who outbid others in an electronically held eBay type of auction, now get a chance to kill the girls they just bought.
It’s a Eurotrash bloodbath flick that comes with the moral lesson that if you got the bread, you can buy your way out of a jam. Of the three girls, only one of them has the means to buy her way out of ringleader Sasha’ (Milan Knazko) torture chamber. Which results in a half-baked ending that was hardly believable or convincing.
For all the supposed fright scenes, even while the vics are fighting for their lives, the film is devoid of suspense. It seems to be more set on being a torture porno film than a horror film, and to hold the American vics and clients more in contempt than it does the Slovakian organizers of this torture scheme.
REVIEWED ON 6/14/2007 GRADE: C- https://dennisschwartzreviews.com/