Watching Hostel Part II is like having a small, weak child tapping on your forehead for ninety-four minutes. It sucks from the get-go”¦ Then you get antsy”¦ Then it starts to burn a little bit”¦ Then you get REALLY pissed off. Boredom is one thing, but there are many constant and shifting levels of boredom at play here. It’s a boredom buffet. I couldn’t make up my mind what to be bored at next!
And we have Eli Roth to thank for this. To call him “The Dane Cook of Horror Movies” is an insult to Dane Cook, alright? And I fucking HATE Dane Cook. At least Cook has an objective and achieves it on occasion, whether or not I think it’s funny. But Eli Roth breaks EVERY SINGLE PROMISE a horror film is supposed to make.
He’s the Ryan Seacrest of Horror Movies. Compulsively bland, completely lethargic, and INEXPLICABLY EMPLOYED!
Have you seen the first Hostel? Then you don’t have to subject yourself to HOSTEL 2: TORTURE BOOGALOO, which is an exact carbon copy of the original, except the torturees are women. Congratulations must be extended to Mr. Roth, who finally figured out that penises are different from vaginas at thirty-five years of age.
The story this time around centers on Drunky, (Bijou Philips) Blandy (Lauren German), and Waterhead (Heather Matarazzo). They’re art school students in Rome who venture to Prague and get swept up into Slovakia where the two frat boys and their pet Icelandic man Oli met much grisliness in the first film. We are jackhammered and benumbed by these three uninteresting women for a good solid thirty minutes of NOTHING HAPPENING! We begin to hate these women, for Blandy doesn’t say or do anything worth the sweat off a dead hobo’s sack, Waterhead subjects us to a piss-poor Willow Rosenberg impression, and Drunky IS PLAYED BY BIJOU PHILIPS! Whether Roth does this to callously harden us for the torture, I’ll leave to you, but I wouldn’t put it past that asshole.
So naturally, same said grisliness must befall these three young, annoying stock characters. An actual Internet bidding war erupts among the wealthy businessmen over the three girls, organized by the shadowy, nameless organization running the torture dungeon.
The torture and death is much worse the second time around”¦ No, not in gore terms, for Roth proves himself as a complete wuss with the amount of cutaways that will leave gorehounds mourning their lost ten bucks. It’s worse because the misogynist tendencies on display in the middle of the road original Hostel and the excruciating Cabin Fever are now intentional and fully aware.
ATTENTION: SPOILERS AHEAD
The first one to bite it is Waterhead, who is hung nude from the ceiling over a bathtub. Then a lady comes in, strips naked, lies in the tub, and starts poking the hanging girl with a scythe, bathing in her blood Elizabeth Bathory-style. Now were this made by some jackass who didn’t know what he was doing, I’d have called this the most blatantly misogynistic scene to come out of mainstream horror films in America “¦ pretty much ever. But come on. Roth has his indulgent Uncle Quentin behind him. Roth just proves he’s a preening, callow punk, trying to push buttons without regard for WHY certain buttons need to be pushed. It dawned on me during this scene that I was watching a movie directed by a kid who ate his own boogers for nickels in the school cafeteria. You’re not offended because he’s too stupid to be embarrassed. You’re just pissed off you’re sitting next to him.
It gets worse, with Drunky being made up like a skank for her torturer while being taunted with a buzzsaw and Blandy being made up to look like her torturer’s wife. Now there are gonna be some who say “Hey, it’s okay, because one of the girls gets away at the end and cuts off her captor’s Wedding Tackle.” Yeah, right. Someone’s actually gonna be stupid enough to think that a poorly edited, blurry, and essentially bloodless castration is gonna make up for about eighty prior minutes of runny shit after runny shit after runny shit on the female gender. I’m imagining someone wandering through the desert, clutching their last supplies, believing them as irrefutable proof that they will survive.
“Well, it’s about a hundred-twenty in the shade out here, I stopped sweating a half an hour ago, and I can literally feel my eyeballs evaporating”¦ BUT I GOT GRAPE JAM AND A PAIR OF SOCKS, SO I’M GONNA BE OKAY!”
/SPOILERS
So the gore is riddled with cutaways, we don’t care about the characters, the acting is awful, (especially by Matarazzo and Philips) there’s nothing on the technical side to write home about, and the screenplay is like it’s written by Josef Mengele on one of his “saucy” days. This is all tethered around the fact that torture, as a horror film device is JUST PLAIN FUCKING BORING! Honestly, how many ways can you film someone being tied or handcuffed to a chair while someone administers cookie cutter tortures? It’s just grue and stickiness with no real invention. How is this fun? Or scary? It’s just stupid.
And I can picture Roth strutting behind the camera like he’s big as Billy Be-Damned when he’s just the little kid who pusses out when he has to say “Candyman” in front of the mirror for the fifth time. His preoccupation with torture, his willingness to drop us into an expository No Man’s Land of dullness, and his incapability to move us one way or another just goes to show that he doesn’t have the brains, doesn’t have the guts, and doesn’t have the fucking SACK to make a real horror film.
Though it’s not like he’s ever even tried.
Hostel Part II is fucking worthless.
Zero Stars out of 4
Best review EVER!!
Comment by tripleB — June 8, 2007 @ 6:49 pm
Easily the best review I’ve read since Nick Schager of Slant Magazine said, “Saying Uwe Boll’s Alone in the Dark is better than his 2003 American debut House of the Dead is akin to praising syphilis for not being HIV.”
Bravo.
Comment by xeph — June 8, 2007 @ 7:27 pm
You’re a geek. Your opinion is worthless. Shut up.
Comment by Tom Smith — June 8, 2007 @ 7:29 pm
@Tom Smith (if that is in fact your real name)
I counter your baseless slander with baseless logic.
Everyone knows that one geek’s opinion is worth at least three Smith’s opinions. Being a self-professed movie geek who writes for several horror and geek related sites, Doc Royce’s opinion is then multiplied by each site’s geek factor and an arbitrarily chosen number between 7 and 23… making his particular opinion (on average) nearly 7,500 times more relevant than your average Smith’s opinion…
In other words… unless you’re Eli Roth and you wanna box Royce or something more visceral, STFU L0053r!
Comment by Dave3 — June 8, 2007 @ 7:41 pm
Well done. You are the best.
Comment by Jerry — June 8, 2007 @ 7:43 pm
Soooooooooo… was it good?
Comment by Ben — June 8, 2007 @ 8:01 pm
no images? ;)
Comment by The Pandora Effect — June 8, 2007 @ 8:45 pm
Fuckin’ spot on, Royce!
Comment by 1-900-HEY-NICK — June 8, 2007 @ 8:56 pm
Lol that review is awesome hahaha so I’ll cross hostel 2 off the list then :)
Thanks for the review Doc :)
Comment by Loki — June 8, 2007 @ 9:05 pm
Great review, i ll make sure NOT to catch this one.
Comment by LETHALDREAD — June 9, 2007 @ 12:29 am
Just saw this movie today. It was horrible. Save your self some time and don’t watch it. No creativity, some old cookie cutter stuff.
Comment by Jason Bourne — June 9, 2007 @ 1:36 am
Excellent review, even the first one was very testing..it was basically just torture porn (which is what these films should be classified as)
Comment by Movie TV — June 9, 2007 @ 2:23 am
HO-HUM.
HORROR DOES NOT SCARE ANYMORE. SO IS THERE ANY POINT MAKING IT?
THE DOCTOR HAS REVIEWED A FILM I WILL OBVIOUSLY NOT SEE WITH SUCH VIGOUR I AM PROUD TO SAY THAT THE TRUTH CUTS THROUGH BULLSHIT LIKE A HOT-BOWIE-KNIFE-THROUGH-A-FRESH-TURD.
GENIUS!
IN RETROSPECT, THE ONLY HORROR AND TORTURE YOU COULD GAUGE FROM THIS FILM IS HE FACT THAT WATCHING IT WOUDL BE TORTURE ENOUGH. SEEMS LIKE IT WOULD BE 90 MINUTES OF MY LIFE I WOULD NEVER GET BACK.
Comment by Manic_Rage — June 9, 2007 @ 2:44 am
Woah! No need to be yelling, Manic.
Comment by badjoke — June 9, 2007 @ 4:34 am
I did a similar review. This movie did not even live up to it’s hype at all. Unlike the first one, this one had no tits or gore.
You’re right, the casting was awful as hell (the 2 dude were from Desperate housewives, lol)
Comment by DillDoe — June 9, 2007 @ 4:38 am
Saw the film. Carbon copy of the original. Film 0. Review 10
Comment by Edgar6532 — June 9, 2007 @ 4:47 am
I couldn’t agree more. My review of the movie was just as scathing.
Comment by Disdain — June 9, 2007 @ 7:11 am
That was the stupidest fucking review I’ve ever read. While you make a couple valid points (somewhat long/boring exposition, a few lame cutaways), you’re wrong on many other accounts. For one, how in the FUCK is this movie misogynistic? Just becasue they’re killing women this time doesn’t mean they hate women (or did you think the first one hated men too?).
Secondly, there was some good acting in the movie, put on by the two friends coming to kill the girls. That and some good storyline/filming of their scenes brought me to care about what happened to them. In an interesting take on a perspective we didn’t have in the original (the killers’) we get to see inside their minds and see why they do this. The two men basically eventually switch places in their attitudes, which means they’re dynamic characters, something good films have. Maybe you should do a little more research on “character development” next time.
Additionally, there were several excellent technical shots (which you say don’t exist); the 3-second juxtaposition shot of the two men in the elevator, dressed up and going to meet their victims, did an fantastic job of saying everything about their contrasting mindsets. The scene in the beginning of various people receiving their “phone calls” was well done and creepy as fuck, too.
While this isn’t the best horror movie made, it certainly didn’t suck balls like the author of this review does.
Comment by Garlock — June 9, 2007 @ 2:08 pm
Nice review. I will still watch it because I need to sort shit out for myself. Not that I don’t respect opinions, I do, I also respect my own. So I will have to see it and then, probably, regret it. Thanks for the heads up.
Comment by Mr. Smity — June 9, 2007 @ 7:13 pm
@Garlock.
Okey-dokey, shit-stain…
First off, HOSTEL PART II is misogynist on a cold and bloodless level, because not only does it linger on the deaths of the three girls A HELL OF A LOT LONGER than it did on the guys in the first movie, but it’s crammed in there for no other reason than to make the audience squirm, with no regard for telling a story or (God forbid in a horror movie these days) FUCKING SCARING PEOPLE! Eli Roth is the cinematic directorial apparent to Tom Green.
Second, the two killers are sorely miscast, being as one looks way too much like a wuss and one looks way too much like a cold-eyed killer. They don’t look like real people, they look LIKE ACTORS typecast as PREDICTABLE CHARACTERS in a SHITTY HORROR MOVIE. If you didn’t see that change coming, how on Earth did they let you into such a violent movie at your young age of four? And neither of them did enough with what they were given to make them interesting.
And congratulations for listing “a three second juxtaposition shot” as one of the BIG TWO REASONS that HOSTEL PART DUH is a technical masterpiece. Do allow me to dance and profess my prior sins to a loving God now that I know the turd I watched is a fucking SHINY one!
But you come back next time with a coherent thought, when you aren’t writing the alphabet with your tongue on Eli Roth’s browneye, umkay?
Comment by Dr. Royce Clemens — June 10, 2007 @ 2:43 am
Pointless on all respects dorks. Critics. Can’t live with ’em and they can’t do a better job themselves if they were given the money and all the resources necessary. That’s why they critique. In order to make up for their lack of any true skill other than literary commentary. Thanks for your worthless opinion jackass. I always like to make up my own mind rather than follow some self-righteous idiot dribble.
Comment by Cecil — June 10, 2007 @ 11:28 am
@Cecil.
Awww. It wants attention…
I ask what it says about you that you can’t even muster up a review, and have to resort to trolling around Comment boards and leaving pithy comments when you didn’t even say whether the movie was good or not.
If you liked the movie, say why.
If you haven’t even seen it… Then what in God’s name are you DOING here?
Comment by Dr. Royce Clemens — June 10, 2007 @ 1:46 pm
what bullshit. how in the fuck can you call this movie misogynistic? is this your first horror flick or what? chicks have been getting there just desserts in horror movies since day one. these dumb bitches probably deserved what they got anyways…fucking lezbo ass art school skanks. come on now. i think if he had more time for a little backstory on these “poor ladies” we’d see it’s more about karma and less about degrading women. and if eli roth is such a shit stain of a director how come tarantino is backing him? he could produce anyone. but he chooses roth, because despite what you might wanna say he knows how to set a scene and yeah, it’s not perfect but what movie is?
i’m suprised you don’t go and whine and cry like a bunch of other assholes about “oh, he says fag in his movies he must hate gays” boo fucking hoo. politically correct dork shit has no room in this type of flick. he’s writing characters in a situation. grow a little bit tougher skin and quit being such a whiny pussy.
maybe you should take the comments of people like garlock with a little more than a grain of salt and start acting like someone who knows what they’re talking about instead of jumping on the bleeding-heart superpussy bandwagon. just sip your iced mocha and stand on the corner with your “hilary for president” sign until you can see a hacker movie for what it is. a hacker movie. go fucking review fried green tomatoes or something.
Comment by SlimJim — June 10, 2007 @ 2:46 pm
@Dr Royce…
I haven’t seen the movie but I do plan on it. It’s my money, my time, my opinion that matters, not some other self-absorbed critic. I do not make it a point to scour useless critiques like this one but someone sent me this useless link thinking you were witty. All I read was some self-righteous BS that is hidden behind personal attacks against the director/producer and others that disagree with you. So attack me. I could care less.
I am not trying to start some debate or a flame war deal but you missed my point altogether. Figures. It doesn’t matter what you say, some other shmuck says, I say, or whomever. It’s all someone’s opinion. Which matters for nothing. It amazes that people cannot seem to make up their own minds. Most people are sheep and follow some herder as they lack their opinions to make their own decisions then they might stumble across your review and actually believe your twisted one-sided opinion. It just amazes me after reading the comments how much that is true. They never have seen the movie but yet agree with you. Trust me I will not be back to visit this other than to read your reply. Thank you for your time and useless banter.
Comment by Cecil — June 10, 2007 @ 3:20 pm
damn, i’ve never wanted to do movie reviews before…but now…
the idiocy you get entertain yourself with after writing one of these is more than worth the two or three hours you spend watching and writing about these shitty flicks.
from people attempting to debate that eli roth’s films don’t display a disturbing hatred of women to people who visit critic’s pages to, well, talk about how much they hate critics.
Comment by doc.cheddah — June 10, 2007 @ 4:23 pm
Judging from the first one if things ever go sour for him he probably has a career waiting for him in the porno industry.
Comment by Motorcycle Guy — June 11, 2007 @ 7:00 am
@Cecil
You know Cecil you’re just a fucking idiot. You fucking suck and are contradicting everything you said. ** review is fucking fact and I fucking said the movie sucked, and fuck, the movie did fucking suck.
Fuck you.
[ED NOTE: This comment brought to you by the letter F]
Comment by ffffffffffffffffffdddddddddddddd — June 11, 2007 @ 10:17 am
Rather hilarious review.
Comment by Terminal — June 11, 2007 @ 12:27 pm
You’re the Jon Lovitz of Movie Reviewers.
Comment by Chris — June 11, 2007 @ 4:10 pm
P.S. I love it when people use lame-ass cliche catch phrases that they see other people use like “Torture Porn”. Why don’t you go have a “Torture Circle Jerk”.
Comment by Chris — June 11, 2007 @ 4:12 pm
…just browsing reviews of this movie, since I just saw an interview with the director on Conan and he struck me as the how-can-someone-be-this-violent-and-hateful-to-women-and-not-be-in-prison-yet type. (How is it misogynist? To scratch the tip of that iceberg…powerless women begging for mercy while being tortured & murdered- while sexualized? And the fact it’s geared towards males? Yikes. Seriously, if you find that entertaining in any way, wasting your money on a movie like that would probably be the very least of your problems…)
Apparently a lot of critics reviewing this movie feel it’s worthless & the guy who belched up this snuff film is just a sick fuck.
Comment by alsd — June 12, 2007 @ 1:36 am
Thank you for posting this. I went and saw that movie last night and it was god awful. My friends and I had to laugh through the whole movie to keep it interesting, that didn’t work but laughing at everything possible was great. It deffinately wasn’t worth the $7.50 we had to pay to get in. If you haven’t seen this movie, don’t.
Comment by Laura — June 16, 2007 @ 2:35 pm
Awsome Review!…….two thumbs up!!!
Comment by Anshul — June 17, 2007 @ 12:21 am
Your review of this funny is perhaps witty, but seriously untrue. The sequel is not exactly like the first one, but an interesting spin-off. In the first one you see the victims and you grow to love them. Then you see the attractive women they fuck and you grow to love them too. Then, you see the killers kill and you hate them. You feel sympathy for the victims and don’t pay mind to the killers.
This one decided to play it a little diferently. The victims were not likable at all. In fact, they were annoying as hell. The two main killers however were very well developed and you gained an interest for them. While of course they are sick fucks, somewhere in the back of your mind you are rooting for the killers to just end the girls’ pathetic lives. I did not care for the ending though.
Finally, as a side note, I don’t think this movie meant to be degrading to women, it just wanted to shake things up a little bit. It might of come off as sexist, but I think that is taking it a little too far.
Comment by Tim — June 26, 2007 @ 12:26 am
You know every time someone critize hostel 2 for being misogynistic i cant help but to think they are full of shit, or cant notice the double standards by which the judge the director.
In the first one we got to see the male main characters getting tortured and killed(which by the way was 10 times worse than this poor excuse of torture scenes), how the hell did nobody complained about him hating men?
The fact is he used male main characters for the first one, and now he used female main characters.
(By the way is there even a word for hating men like misogyny? of course not)
The double standard is complete and utter bullshit, unless i hear you complain about the first one then people need to SERIUSLY STFU about the “misogyny” of this film. It is simple the same formula of the first movie you dimwits.
Furthermore the movie did indeed show us that women arent completly helpless innocent victims and they can survive on their own, in fact can be more brutal than men, remember the lady of the “bathtub” inspired in REAL LIFE serial killer Elizabeth Bathory?. Check it on wikipedia.
Everything about the ending proved that point.
Now that we got that out of the way, the movie is complete crap not worth seeing. It doesnt have enough gore, it doesnt have the new original element of the first one, is not scary there is hardly any suspence, and well is between hilarious and one of the worse endings i cant remember. 2 twists near the end does not justify a 1.5 hr movie.
He may as well gone with more gore or at least some conclusion at the all thing, but no the movie failed in every single department.
A complete disappointment from the first movie.
PD:By the way the main characters this time were annoying as HELL. Like am gonna care for some Emo girl characters.
Jay hernandez played a much better and sympathetic character.
Comment by osborn19 — July 3, 2007 @ 11:53 pm
They try to make the movie deeper or something like that,and they simply failed.The movie is complete fucking waste of time,except if you are a necrophil.I rather watch horror films from 1956 with cutting limbs and shit like that,this movie is the same shit,just with some titties.Sad but true,i liked the hostel 1.
Comment by Camil — July 9, 2007 @ 11:36 am
@osborn19
Get off your Y chromosome high-horse long enough to consult a dictionary.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=misandry
Comment by ImGonnaEatYourFuckinBrains — July 22, 2007 @ 5:58 am
LOL i did look it out, interestly enough it was NOT on the dictionary of the RAE, which stands for Spanish royal academy( spanish is my first language), Which are the people that study the spanish language.
It maybe because Misandria(or misandry) is not a nearly as talked term like mysoginy.
In any case, that issue is less than important here.
Comment by osborn19 — August 6, 2007 @ 12:53 am
This movie is another torture porn flick. So do like what you do with normal porn, fast-forward to the money shot. The only difference is that the goo is red.
Comment by Tony — September 13, 2007 @ 1:35 pm
I agree. Hostel 2 is exactly like Hostel 1 except with female victims. The first 30 minutes are boring as hell. Not enough gore for my taste either. Also the movie isn’t deep enough explaining the origins of Elite Hunting and Paxton getting killed in the first scene is gay. Complete waste of time.
Comment by Adam — November 2, 2007 @ 8:33 pm
it’s not worthless… it’s just you expected much from it
Comment by ... — December 26, 2007 @ 2:02 am
You are a genius.
Said everything i thought about this film and put it in more coherent terms than i could muster.
I hope Roth may use this film as a basis to learn on if not then we are all fucked when he releases the third
Comment by Alex1232 — August 3, 2008 @ 8:45 pm