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Three gals taking art classes in Rome – independent Beth (Lauren German), party girl Whitney (Bijou Phillips), and meek Lorna (Heather Matarazzo) – find themselves lured to a Slovakian spa and subsequently the infamous hostel. Meanwhile, two middle-aged American businessmen – one skeptical (Roger Bart), the other psyched (Richard Burgi) – make their way overseas to pay good money for the opportunity to stick it to their nubile victims.

It’s hard not to feel the strain as writer/director Eli Roth (Cabin Fever, the original Hostel) tries to not make his protagonists too slutty or too stupid in their behavior, as if it matters just how vulnerable or asking for it these women are. Chances are, those going into Hostel: Part II know what awaits them, and all the character development in the world isn’t going to stop them for drooling at the sight of flesh wounds and the like.

Sure enough, it’s damn near precisely halfway in when the shit hits the scythe, in a particularly gruesome evisceration scene that quickly demonstrates exactly why this sequel can’t work: there is no suspense to the situation. Squirms and shocks galore, sure, but no tension, leaving one’s bloodlust and patience to grind against one another in the interim. We get the various details behind the operation – the bidding, the contracts, the tattoos, and so on – but that only removes any mystique about the scale of it from the first film. (It’s worth noting that the set design in particular is impressively convincing, and it’s a nice touch that the dungeons seem to have undertaken more elaborate security measures, perhaps in the wake of the previous film's escapee. It’s the little things.)

Otherwise, the hack-and-slash game plays out, with viscera aplenty but little effect outside of kneejerk wincing. Matarazzo returns to her role as Hollywood’s perpetual loser (thanks for nothing, Solondz), German makes good on the arguably biggest character arc around (perhaps the only one), and as the token blonde, Phillips leave next to no impression (no wonder it’s her death we’re coyly deprived of by Roth, undoubtedly grinning from behind the camera). Bart and Burgi do sell us on some unlikely changes of heart, even when a pair of third-act role reversals comes as little surprise. If nothing else, Hostel provides a relatively convincing case for guys to never again refer to a woman by a certain c-word.

About midway through the film, when both the guys and the girls mix it up at a local fair, an ongoing puppet show features a masked man taking an axe to a cowering blonde, while a juvenile crowd giggles on. Meanwhile, I sit in the back row of the sparsely attended Friday afternoon screening, while the heartiest reactions echo back from the very front rows. And who says life doesn’t imitate art?

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originally posted: 06/22/07 23:42:32
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