Starring: Lauren German, Roger Bart, Heather Matarazzo, Bijou Phillips, Richard Burgi, Vera Jordanova

Directed by: Eli Roth

Lion’s Gate Films - Official Site of the Movie

Discuss Hostel Part 2 on the boards!

Torture has been sprinkled in a series of different thrillers over the past couple of years, many of them worth recommending if you’re into this sort of thing, but very few of them center their story completely around it and do it to quite and an extream. At least not to the extent of Eli Roth’s Hostel franchise. Movies like last fall’s Turistas have put their own interesting spin on torture in film, but have never came close to the terror and fear that Eli Roth was able to generate with a simple concept and some brutal visuals. And it’s fun. It’s shocking. Some people really get off on that, but can we really take this horror sub-genre seriously if their grand message is only “Isn’t realistic and excessive gore fun?�

I want a message. I want a deeper meaning to legitimize it. Zombie movies have survived for decades because they’re not just the risen dead gnawing on brains, there’s a larger message of mob mentality, society, and politics (depending on who your director is). As appealing as the “living dead� are conceptually, it would get old quickly if there weren’t some greater truth hidden in its cynicism. When the original Hostel was released last year, that was the sort of message I was looking for. Not necessarily some unique take on politics or society, but some other message behind the story, a method to the madness, some personal commentary when the blood is wiped away. Then at least there would be a point to it all. But point or not, these movies are freaky and difficult to watch (in a good way) and there will always be an audience for that.

Hostel 2 picks up where the first one left off closing the story of one man’s escape from a secret hunting club where the big game is gullible young college students. He is the lone survivor of three men who got lured into the very secret, very deadly game when they first checked in to a mysterious hostel. The sequel takes that familiar premise and puts a clever new twist on it. This time instead of three guys it’s… three girls. Ok, that’s not so much “clever� as convenient, especially since the films slow build pacing and sudden climaxes play out nearly identically, but movies about people getting butchered aren’t really concerned with being clever.

The three girls (newcomer Lauren German, indie-pro Heather Matarazzo and socialite Bijou Phillips) end up falling for the same tricks as they’re seduced into getting comfortable while the dangerous folks around them prepare to have them slaughtered. To Roth’s credit, he’s actually a skilled storyteller when it comes to character development and anticipation. He makes you wait for the kill and he knows how to make that wait an anxious one.

The best thing that this movie does is show the other side of things. In the first film, we all sort of knew what was going on even though we were only seeing things from the naïve tourist’s perspective, but this time around Roth was kind enough to give us a better look at the business end of this secret hunting club. We see how the victims are lured to the hostel, how their passports are taken, scanned in, and submitted online for worldwide bidding. We see the clubs strong control of the community. We see a new perspective on the motivations of the bidders and what really brings them to the club to kill someone. (Roger Bart and Richard Burgi do a great job playing different ends of the spectrum and were an exciting addition to the film.) The most twisted part of the entire process to me involved a town fair where the bidders would watch their future victims from across the yard, almost as if they were picking out which cow they wanted for dinner later that night. It really drove home how demented the whole things was.

This is all before we really see anything visually disturbing though. Anything really frightening. But things have changed. Before, the scariest thing in a movie was what they weren’t showing us. A perfect example is the ear removal in Reservoir Dogs. That shit is CRAZY scary! Somewhere along the line someone decided that it would be a lot more upsetting to actually show what was happening. And they were kind of right. The build-up to these scenes is difficult but the scenes themselves are excruciating. I found myself twisting in my seat and hiding behind my hands desperately hoping for it to end. But at the same time I kept watching. I guess because I wanted to know how far they were going to go with it.

Hostel 2 goes far but with different results. One attack that featuring a fully naked woman hung upside down over a bathtub with her killer taking a sickle to her was truly upsetting. Visually you see way too much but for me the real terror came in the actress’s performance. Her screams and pleas during the scene where impossible to escape. You’ll be praying for inevitable death to come sooner just so her pain will stop. Credit to the performer who made something that was all ready far too real, that much more genuine. It’s something I never want to see again, but it was a horror movie scene that will not soon be forgotten.

The second of the two major mutilation scenes I can’t even get into without spoilers but I don’t think it had the effect that Roth desired. The crowd I was with was laughing and hooting instead of screaming and squirming. And that’s a problem, because the way the movie is set up, far too much weight is put into these two scenes being effective. If they don’t work correctly the entire first half is a tease to nothing. And while part of me never wanted to see the gruesome torture scenes to begin with, the final scene left me horror blue balls.

The movies story does recover nicely though in the final stand that our heroine takes. In the first film we were treated to a stealthy and vengeful escape that left the audience revitalized and satisfied. There’s still hope that the good guy can win, or at the very least wiggle out of town with all his limbs. The sequel takes a different approach, but it’s not the obvious one. Without going into spoilers and revealing which character does what I’ll say that the heroine’s final fate was one that surprised me quite a bit. At the same time, it made me fear for humanity. (If you’d like to know what happens go to this post on the boards for a brief but detailed explanation of the films big climactic moments.)

Fear for humanity would be a great hidden message to go out on, but I get the impression that most of what unravels is Hostel 2 is a joke among the creators in how gruesome they can get. As much as I hope for that deeper subtext while watching this movie and movies like it… it’s not there. Hostel 2 is really just shock and gore for the sake of entertainment. And that’s fine in its way, I can appreciate real horror fans that grew up on slasher flicks and were inspired to take things to a new level in order to freak out the younger audiences. Theirs something beautiful and pure in their passion of the art form, but the films would hold more weight, and the genre would have a longer lifespan, if it was more than passionate directors trying to out gross each other.

Rating: 5 out of 10 - I liked where they took the story and how it was presented, but I can’t say that I was terribly impressed with Hostel 2 as a whole. It has good elements but it far from a good movie. After a slumpy box office stand I suspect this is the end of the franchise, but certainly not the end of horror. There will always be a market for it no matter how extreme it gets. In a year someone is going to raise the bar and you’ll start hearing stories about people throwing up in movie theatres again. And I’ll be there looking for a message. I just hope it’s not the guy behind me that’s doing the throwing up.

Pass. Many of you might know my basic reaction to horror on DVD. I’ve seen it once so I know why and when it’s going to be scary, and when you remove the scary moments from most scary movies, what you’re left with often isn’t worth revisiting at all. I liked the set-up in Hostel 2 but it was neither interesting nor poignant enough for me to break out my wallet again. If this is what you’re into though, by all means – buybuybuy.

Hostel - The original Hostel is much stronger than its sequel, partly because the concept of “extreme gore� was a new one. Audiences had never been exposed to this amount of on-screen brutality and the box office reflected that. Curiosity got the better of us and people came out in droves wanting to know how far the MPAA let them go. And those torture scenes were pretty intense. More so than Hostel 2, though I can’t figure out if that’s because it was the first time I had seen anything like that or because they really were that much better. Either way, audiences knew what to expect the second time around, and no movie will live up to expectations.

It was an incredible weekend at Wizard World Philly. Tons of great new creators I’ve never met before were there debuting some really fun new stuff. I can’t wait to dig through the pile of comics I bought. As it is though, I’m a little distracted with Scott Pilgrim, a book that Phil got me hooked on. Is it wrong that of Scott’s romantic choices I prefer Knives, the Asian 17-year-old groupie?

On the business end of things, the show was an even greater success. We’ve done the Philly show for 4 years now and I feel like we’ve finally reached a place where we understand what the crowds want and how to market it to them. The Turtle vs. Bunny T-shirts went over huge, and I can’t wait until the trade debuts later this year (more on that soon). For a while I was afraid that we were becoming a glorified t-shirt store, but people really started to respond to the brand new Matriculated Collection. What a relief. People responding to the shirts is fantastic, but in our hearts it’s the stories we tell that we hope people will really be drawn to.

Philly was an all around great show with full days and some hard partying nights. It’s making me really look forward to San Diego Comic Con and Wizard World Chicago later this summer. If you’re attending either of those shows be sure to track us down and say “What’s up?�

Last week I contributed a guest comic to Bored and Evil‘s anniversary celebration. Such a fun strip to work on. How often do you get to use Jason Voorhees (or “Jake� as he’s referred to in BandE) as a comical character? I guess as often as I like considering I do a comic about movies. But when one comic has been doing it so well for so long, anything I try would just be a cheap knock off. Thanks to Robert for the invite. Be sure to check out his stuff. And I’ll see you soon.