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| Movie Forums :: Reviews :: Hostel: Part II |
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Posted on 6/08/07
Hostel: Part II
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Hostel is a film that has as many lovers as haters. Genre fans seem to hate it for its false promises of gore and violence. I despised it on account of all those who love this waste of celluloid.
The film is essentially a one-note concept. It does not deliever on its promise of 'torture porn' and exploitational shocks. Hostel 2 takes the concept of torture porn and the same old storyline of backpackers in Eastern Europe swayed to stay in a small village, only to be sold off to the highest bidder and brutally killed. The only new thing the sequel offers is the added perspective of the torturers, female victims, and a lot more rubbish from start to finish.
Showing the torturers is, unfortunately, where it really fell apart for me. Although the actors playing the torturers have both been in good roles (The Weasel in Lost Room and the other a villian from the 24: Season 1), both have also been in Desperate Housewives, something which comes off as comical and prevents them from fulfilling their roles.
They're both also very unevenly written; I can imagine Roth thinking he's hit the motherload by having them swap timid roles to sadistic ones, but the writing doesn't support this and it just comes across as random.
The prospective victims also receive a great deal of focus, but they're even less interesting than those in the first film, who just wanted to get laid and stoned (something I can actually relate to). Using only women this time round is probably something else Roth thinks was a masterstroke, but it just confuses the film's sexual mood.
Of course, anyone expecting well-rounded characters here is looking in the wrong place. We're here for the promised torture porn! However, Roth seems too caught up in his convoluted plot to remember this. Characters run around and get taken places for no reason other than to engage in little narrative winks, turning straightforward kidnappings into over-complicated affairs just so we know that so-and-so is bad.
The film's hyped insights into The Company consist of going to a house, seeing people in security rooms, and divulging the fate of Paxton from the first film, albeit through an anti-climatic opening. That's it.
It's absurd that Roth could miss the mark so much on this film; we see only one of three main characters killed on screen, and in the main scene, there's more focus on the fetish than the death, which itself is poorly developed and introduced. This horror is only a whisper in the film but these sadistic fetishes should be shouted out. The film's big pay-off is something I will leave unspoiled. It is quite gruesome, however; not especially in the visual sense, but it at least tries to adhere to the film's premise. It's just a shame GrindHouse beat Roth to it.
The whole concept of Hostel is people being tortured, and Hostel 2 fails remarkably at capitalising on this principle. The film pushes no buttons what so ever: it can't elicit any form of emotional response other than boredom. I can just imagine Roth smirking at his film, admiring how he characterised the two torturers who don't create any sense of fear or intrigue.
Admittedly the film is well put-together. It's watchable, but then again that surely means it has failed. The sad thing is how many people will praise as they did the first for making them sick to their stomach, or unable to watch, something I can't for the life of me understand. Even if people praise it for that, there's still so many plain-old stupid aspects, like the local kids from the Hostel who didn't work then, and don't work now.
The ending's attempt at humour is unwise, and undermines all the dark horror it attempted to create. There's nothing in this film to recommend; it hasn't got any of the originality of the first, or the intriguing concept and plotting of Saw or Saw 2. Don't waste your time with it.
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