By Kevin McCarthy

When HOSTEL and WOLF CREEK both arrived during the 2005 holiday season, they garnered a lot of attention for their gory scenes of torture and for heralding the arrival of torture horror to the U.S. I saw both films in theaters and found Eli Roth’s HOSTEL to be the better of the two. What made Roth’s film so enjoyable was not the protracted sequence of sadistic violence, but the manic third act. The tempo increased dramatically and the audience was rewarded for its perseverance with one of the most madcap, violent chases ever captured on film. The second film picks up right on the heels of the first, but where it doesn’t lack the creativity of its predecessor, HOSTEL: PART II is ultimately a letdown.

Where the first HOSTEL featured male protagonists, its sequel follows two female students studying in Rome. The two decide to unwind with a backpacking trip to Prague, and invite a mousy classmate to go along. On the way, an exotic friend encourages the coeds to join her at the titular lodge to enjoy the fabled hot springs of a nearby Slovakian town for the weekend. Meanwhile, Roth expands on the workings of the HOSTEL scheme, where potential victims are auctioned off to wealthy would-be torturers. This is about as hokey a sequence as the film offers. The electronic auction montage plays like something out of an eBay commercial which ends with top bidder being awarded a beeper that alerts him when his prey is ready. The beeper is identical to the type you’re given when there’s a wait at Chili’s. I was half-expecting someone to ask for a bottomless bowl of tortillas and salsa to kill the time.

Now that he’s delivered his promised reveal of the world behind HOSTEL, we rejoin the girls as they are systematically separated, captured and tortured. This is where Roth is most comfortable, and he obviously spent a lot of time figuring out how to squeeze all the gore out of the second act. But, he’s suffering from a minor case of Shyamalanism here as his characters start to lose any semblance of their former selves in the name of keeping his audience guessing as to who survives. His efforts are wasted, as the conclusion of HOSTEL: PART II is entirely anticlimactic. 

The HOSTEL films don’t play by the traditional rules of the horror genre. The killers are numerous and unknown, so there’s not a lot to live on psychologically. Moviegoers are looking for a visceral reaction that extends beyond shock value. They want to see things that they can’t find elsewhere — especially in a genre populated by creepy children and insects. The torture shouldn’t be the ends, but the means — a sort of trial — as it was in the original.  This being a sequel, Roth has wisely framed the film around the looming fates of his heroines. Everybody knows what’s going to happen to these girls, so most of the suspense is drawn from the audience recognizing the pitfalls before Lauren German’s Beth and Bijou Phillips’ Whitney do. Unfortunately, the film can live on this one note for only so long. Roth’s debut, CABIN FEVER, is a great example of how eschewing horror tropes can end in catastrophe. After I saw HOSTEL, I thought he had learned his lesson about how innovation does not necessarily guarantee success. His latest effort only proves that he doesn’t really understand his audience.