Pardon the pun but HOSTEL: PART II feels a bit choppy. Director Eli Roth (media darling and splat pack wunderkind) has succeeded in giving us more imaginative gore but the story behind the blood isn't as satisfying. There are moments in which we are titillated by the questions the movie raises (concerning the torture for pay circuit - what does such a thing say about us as a species, as individuals) but none of that promise is realized. Instead, we get teased by the possibilities. HOSTEL: PART II is a glib exercise in one upsmanship. It tries to outgore itself instead of giving us a well told story.
What we get is a montage of wealthy businessmen (and women) bidding on prospective victims and then we settle in to focus on two budding torturers who have won the bidding while the story parallels the three young girls travelling in Europe who have been selected as victims. The budding torturers seem interesting at first but Roth doesn't really know what to do with them. He ends up making rather perfunctory dramatic choices with their character arcs. To some extent you can see it all coming. The idea of going behind the scenes with the torturers is a good one but Roth cheaps out on us and tries to be clever with gore instead. One wonders if Roth is the victim of his own media hype.
There is something to be said for the HOSTEL series. It speaks to a primal instinct in all of us to dominate others and show no mercy. It speaks to the evil men do when no one is watching. It speaks to the corrupting influence of extreme wealth. But like most great concepts, the fun is really in the anticipation and discovery. Once the horror is revealed and a light shined on it, the truth is less interesting than the baddies we imagine in our own hearts.
The first HOSTEL was much more effective. We discovered the truth slowly, lulled into a complacency bordering on coma in the movie's first hour and then we were shocked by everything we saw in the third act. it was very conventional in its setup, but flowed into something unique and different conceptually (the idea of institutionalized torture). And it's a great subject for the times we live in. What exactly are we capable of and where does our desensitization to violence really end? Ah well...perhaps we'll leave these things to a more mature filmmaker.
HOSTEL: PART II jumps around a lot and most scenes are actually quite dull. Nothing feels new. Most of it feels contrived and targeted to get a reaction. The gore payoff scenes actually feel cheap rather than shocking (poor Heather Matarazzo, will she ever play a love interest instead of a victim/nerd?). The movie has a glib professionalism to it but little joy. How are we supposed to experience being truly bad if there is no actual horror?
(Big time spoilers follow...)
There are other things that bother me which speak to the conventionalism of Roth's choices. The rich girl (Loren German) buying her way out of the torture chamber (saw it coming, wasn't sure how she'd do it but saw it coming a half hour into the film). The reluctant torturer turning into limp dicked badass who takes out his mysoginist frustrations on our heroine (saw it coming a mile away, was appalled at how obvious the choice was). And let's discuss one more thing. The gorgeous girl who gets whacked at the end of the movie (what did she do that everybody else in town wasn't already in on? Didn't they all deserve to get whacked?). I found the scene in the first movie where Jay Hernandez runs down the townies in his car much more satisfying. And let's not even talk about the dumb contrived way that Jay Hernandez loses his head in the movie's first ten minutes.
(End spoiler...)
All this amounts to a requiem for a movie that could have been. Rest in peace HOSTEL: PART II. Long live your predecessor. Let's hope Eli Roth redeems himself if there's a #3.