Hostel: Part II - Kind of split audiences

The first ‘Hostel’ film seemed to be widely-regarded as at least worth a watch (mainly by horror buffs with slightly warped minds – I confess to being one such person).  However, the sequel (also written and directed by Eli Roth) was met with a little more disdain.

It must have been difficult to write as it was one of those situations where Roth was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.  If he tried to be original and created something that was completely different to the first one, he would most likely alienate those who enjoyed the original.  Then again, if he stuck to the original people would claim it’s just a rehash of the first.

It looks like he did the latter.  Whereas ‘Part I’ had three lads holidaying in Slovakia and falling foul to a rather sick and twisted game the locals play, we have three young women in their place.  And that’s where the first problem lies with many people.  It seems that cinema audiences are quite okay with watching men getting ripped open and tortured for fun, but, when it comes to women, it is a little more unsettling.  It certainly is harder to watch as the violence has naturally been cranked up in an attempt to ‘out-do’ the original (which was largely off-screen).

The plot may be – largely – the same, but there are a few reasonable little additions that have been thrown in there to try and ‘expand’ the Hostel universe.  Most notable is the inclusion of introducing two men who actually enjoy killing people enough to bid on the rights to kill the girls.

However, not matter how the same or different the film is, the bottom line is that it does kind of graphically show torture and violence to young women which did – unsurprisingly – turn off a lot of people.  I know it’s not real and it’s just a film, but this time round it is pretty strong stuff and you may wish you’d just stuck to the original.  For die-hards only.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that