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All Movie Info
Starring:
Lauren German, Bijou Phillips, Roger Bart, Richard Burgi, Heather Matarazzo, Jay Hernandez, Jordan Ladd, Edwige Fenech, Ruggero Deodato, Luc Merenda, Rick James, Philip Waley, Vera Jordanova, Stanislav Ianevski, Milan Knazko, Ivan Furak, Zuzana Geislerová, Monika Malacova, Petr Vancura, Philip Waley, Susanna Bequer, Mark Taylor, David Baxa, Roman Janecka, Monika Hladová, Peter Bláha, Davide Dominici, Milda Jedi Havlas, Patrik Zigo, Jan Nemejovsky, Liliya Malkina, Rostislav Osicka
Directed By:
Eli Roth
Written By:
Eli Roth
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Hostel: Part II (2007)
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Movie Review by Jarrod
December 16th, 2007
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'Hostel: Part II' is an exercise in voyeuristic sadism, it is a sick and twisted movie, exploitative and tasteless, but then I would assume Eli Roth intended those adjectives to be used in any description of it. He is a man of immense creative energy, and he clearly loves the horror genre, much like Rob Zombie, and he has a devoted fanbase, of which I am not a member. I did not like Cabin Fever, and was not terribly fond of the first Hostel, in fact, his best work, I think was the fake trailer Thanksgiving he did for Grindhouse, but then everything he does is a little tongue-in-cheek, and 'Hostel II' is no exception. The violence is so grossly and absurdly over-the-top, it almost has a comical quality to it. But, it is cruel and disturbing, guaranteed to make some people squirm, and again, this is the effect Roth is going for. Thankfully, we have a shorter and more interesting prologue.
Three young women, exchange students taking art classes in Rome, meet a hot model named Axelle (Vera Jordanova), who persuades them to go to Slovakia, and the lures them to the notorious hostel. Their pictures are put online, scanned from their passports, and rich clients from all over the world make bids on them, and the winner gets to torture and kill the person he or she bid on. That is the primary focus of the this movie, to show us how this place runs as a business, how clients are contacted, how victims are chosen, and who may be behind it all. Jay Hernandez reprises his role as Paxton, the survivor of the original film, who appears briefly early on, still haunted by his experience, and paranoid that his former captors may come looking for him. And they do. We get the obvious point that no one is supposed to escape. Beth (Lauren German), Whitney (Bijou Philips), and Lorna (Heather Mattarazzo) are the American girls selected as victims this time around.
Whitney is a party animal, who is always on the lookout for cute guys to have sex with. Lorna is shy and nerdy, and Beth has brought her along as an act of kindness. Beth herself is an orphan, apparently, whose mother has left her a seemingly endless inheritance, one that allows her to travel anywhere in the world and stay indefinitely. In addition to victims, we also meet two clients, Todd (Richard Burgi) and Stuart (Roger Bart). Both are American businessmen. Todd initially appears more enthusiastic than Stuart, who seems to have moral reservations, but eventually we realize that first impressions can be deceiving. Matarazzo dangles upside down, naked, as a woman bathes in her blood. This is a shocking and degrading scene, but not really the worst Roth has to offer. That may be the scene in which a man's penis is cut off and fed to dogs, and yes, at least in the version I watched, you see the penis and I believe the testicles, too, and they both look quite real.
A cat licking blood from the stump where a head used to be; that scene made me snicker, so I don't know what that says about me. Those creepy kids are back, too, the hoodlums who like to beat people to death, but I found their presence here to be all but pointless. I really liked Beth, and German's performance, most of all, though Matarazzo is hard to forget, and she bares it all, something many actresses would not do, at least in these circumstances. Bart is fascinating. Overall, I think "Hostel Part II' is self-indulgent and ugly, but is not without its flourishes of mad, feverish, perverted brilliance. Roth's mind is a scary and sick place, but then only a mind such as that could produce a movie like this.
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