WARNING: The following review is not for the squeamish. As with Eli Roth's
Hostel in 2005, this summer's sequel
Hostel II (opening June 8 throughout San Diego) hits theaters without preview screenings for critics. But the lack of advance reviews for the original
Hostel didn't dissuade horror fans from coming out opening weekend and making the low budget flick a surprise hit. Let's see if the sequel can live up to its predecessor.
Filmmaker Eli Roth at work on Hostel II (Lions Gate)
Eli Roth's trailer for Hostel II stirred buzz among horror fans when it came out a few months ago. It promised more gruesome terror, as a new group of youths abroad become a commodity in a black market that caters to rich sadists looking for victims to torture.
Now I remember chatting with Roth after Hostel came out (I was working on a Halloween feature on horror). I had just gone to see Hostel with a young woman horror filmmaker. We had liked Hostel but we both complained that there was too much jiggly, gratuitous female nudity. I passed on this comment to Roth (and I'm sure I wasn't the only one to mention this) and reminded him that more and more women are becoming horror fans, so he should think about them as well as the standard horror demo of males 18 to 34. Hostel II arrives and Roth seems to have addressed all our complaints. There's far less female nudity this time out and even a bit of exposed male flesh. Plus, we get to see a woman turn the tables on her male assailants with lethal vengeance. This is a horror film that women horror fans will be able to embrace. And before you dismiss me as totally sick and twisted, let me just say that there is something appealing about confronting something dark and disturbing in the safety of a movie theater and knowing that everything you're watching is just pretend.
In the first film, you were almost rooting for the shallow, horny young American guys to be knocked off. In Hostel II , a trio of femme protagonists/victims proves far more sympathetic from the get-go. So Roth sets himself up to be condemned as a misogynist for the brutal abuse dished out to the women. But hold off on those complaints until after you see the satisfyingly cathartic final reel.
But I get ahead of myself. Hostel II opens at almost exactly the point where Hostel left offwith Paxton (Jay Hernandez) having just escaped the torture factory where his friends had just been murdered.
When Roth was doing press for Grindhouse (in which he directed the faux trailer for the slasher film Thanksgiving ) he spoke to me about the Hostel films. He confessed, "I never planned to do a sequel. Hostel was supposed to be this little three million dollar movie between movies. But then when the sequel came up I really wanted it to be a better movie than the first. Obviously it has more violence in it. But I thought what if I had not shot credits at the end of Hostel and the story just continued. There were things I wanted to cover but didn't have a chance to."
So Hostel II , has an opening sequence that closes the chapter on Paxton before moving on to the fate of three American girls on holiday. The girls, like the guys before them, end up getting lured to a Slovakian youth hostel by a beautiful woman. Once at the hostel, they are sized up as the ideal product for a murder-for-money syndicate. The girls passport photos are sent out over the Web, and as advertisements. Each is then put up for sale to the highest bidder. Pay top dollar and youll be able to torture these women to death. That's the sick and twisted premise, and, as with the first film, the question is, will any of them survive?
Roth said he took the same strategy for Hostel II as he did for Hostel, no advance screenings for the press. But that's not because he or the studio think critics won't like the film.
Will Lauren German be the one that gets away in Hostel II (Lions Gate)
"The reason we didn't screen Hostel for critics and the reason we're not going to preview screen Hostel II is because people want to know if it's scary. And now with the Internet spoilers get out so fast that if you have a preview screening and one person sees it, it's all over the Internet. If people go to the movie and they know what's gonna happen, it's not as scary any more. So you do everything you can to protect your movie, especially with horror movies. And that's why we won't screen it for critics, not because we're scared of the kind of reviews we'll get."
While some critics dismissed Hostel as nasty fare, others have recognized that Roth is not your run of the mill schlock horror director. He's smart, and his films are clever works of nastiness. Just take the name "hostel." It's a word meant to conjure up pleasant thoughts of a place where young people abroad can stay for a reasonable price. But Roth's film delivers a wicked play on words as it conjures up the homonym for hostel, hostile.
I wanted to make a movie that would work on two levels, Roth says, "If you were going out on a date and you wanted a movie with blood and guts, you'd be totally satisfied. But if you watch movies like I do and you want to see them over and over because there are more levels and you can see different things going on, then the film has that too. Just like the dialogue with the guys in the first half making fun of the hookers and then they become like a commodity later."
In Hostel II , one of the clever moves Roth makes is to focus on the mundane business aspects of the murder-for-money business. The use of the Internet to market the product, and the way people log on and bid as they are eating breakfast with their families or sitting at a high level board meetingall this gives the film a sick, savvy satiric edge. The guys who buy into this murder vacation are doing it so that they will gain an edge in attitude at work. They figure that killing someone will change them, and people will sense a danger about them. They talk about their torture plans as if it were part of a business self-help program. It's like something they'd write off on an expense report since it was intended to boost their effectiveness on the job. This isn't mindless horror, this is horror that plays off of our violent and capitalistic culture. Plus the ruthlessness with which the murder-for-money executives keep their contracts proves bleakly amusing.
Italian director Ruggero Deodato has a cameo in Hostel II
Roth is also smart in how he constructs the film. He delivers a quick jolt of violence right off the top, just to unsettle viewers. Then he engages in a slow build up with a couple fake scares before embarking on an extended and brutal torture. This torture scene goes on for far longer than is comfortable and makes us worried that there's still worse to come. That's the perfect agitated state to keep the audience in. But then Roth gives the gore a different spin. The following torture scenes are shorter. There's even a humorous moment when a man goes in to kill someone and Roth cuts to the surveillance monitor where we assume well see the gruesome deed. But instead a fat security guard walks in front of the screen and blocks our view. So Roth has in fact cheated us out of seeing the kill, yet we know it happened. So Roth's horror is not all about showing the most graphic violence but rather about toying with viewer expectations.
Roth also takes a moment to play yet again on the mundane business aspects of this grisly profession by showing the folks in charge trying to make a little extra money selling some damaged goods for a discounted price. Roth also delivers some inside humor for horror fans. Take for example, the fact that one of the high-paying clients is cannibalizing his victim and the man playing the client is none other than Italian horrormeister Ruggero Deodato whos famous for Cannibal Holocaust.
Hostel II (rated R for or sadistic scenes of torture and bloody violence, terror, nudity, sexual content, language and some drug content) is yet another sick and twisted bit of nasty from Eli Roth. His film is definitely not for everyone but it should satisfy horror fans that want more than just a gorefest.
Companion viewing: Hostel, Cabin Fever, Grindhouse , Cannibal Holocaust
