HOSTEL PART II (2007)
Starring Lauren German, Bijou Phillips and Roger Bart
A worthy follow-up to the original, "Hostel Part 2" opens with a
"Friday the 13th Part 2"-like cameo featuring Jay Hernandez,
sole survivor of the first film, before introducing us to a new crop
of ugly American college
students about to be seduced into visiting the murderous hostel.
In this case, it's a trio of girls studying abroad. When they hit the Euro rails
looking for kicks, only to find themselves being sexually harassed by
unshaven Euro-guys,
they're seduced by a seemingly friendly woman (Vera Jordanova) that previously
served as their nude art model into heading up to
a Slovakian hostel, where
the greatest spa on the planet happens to be.
Gone is the mystery of the first film. We already know what the hostel
is and what
the girls are being led there for. Roth is able to keep the suspense
up by introducing
an interesting subplot: Two American guys heading to Europe to kill the girls. Showing more
of how the murderous system
'Elite Hunting' Organization operates, Roth shows wealthy men
participating in an online auction for the girls before
heading out to Slovakia to take them on in the organization's death camp.
As in the first film, the American victims are for the most part stuck-up, self
centered and sinful.
The victimizers, as we get to know them, aren't unlike -- but they're older men. All of them are consumers
in one form
or another -- living off the economic hardships of foreigners. Roth seems to be
saying that these girls probably have fathers like the men that are about to
kill them. If this
seems like
I'm reading too much into the "Hostel" franchise, well ... there's a
reason these
films are so scary, and it's that they ring some truth. We live in a
consumer-driven world that sucks the life force out of people. The "Hostel"
films show that reality in an extreme way. So they ring true, and make a lot of
money from consumers.
What's perhaps more interesting today than it was a year ago, is the
fact that, indeed,
Americans are hated around the world -- and seeing these clueless college girls
gallivanting around overseas does make one genuinely fear for their safety.
Heather Matarazzo, who was great in Todd Solondz's
"Welcome to the Dollhouse," plays a journal-writing prude. Lauren
German (last seen
as the "teenage girl" in the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"
remake) is the rich
girl who gets the major character arc in the storyline. And Bijou
Phillips is the drunken
sinner girl. The three are seduced into going to the hostel by an art
subject they were
painting in a class taught by legendary '70s horror/exploitation
actress Edwige Fenech.
As sequels go, this is one of the best the genre has seen since -- well a few
weeks back, "28 Weeks Later." But "Hostel Part II" is a great, great movie. Some
say it's better than the first but the first was the first -- if you didn't know
the story in advance the mystery unfolded in a way that was really amazing. This
second film definitely shows Roth's absolute courage as a director. He didn't
pull any punches with this follow up.
Directed
by Eli Roth