Eli Roth’s Hostel debuted in 2005 and instantly thrust itself into the annals of horror history. Friends Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and Josh (Derek Richardson) go to Europe for a backpacking trip. There they meet Óli (Eyþór Guðjónsson) and the three stay at a local hostel. When they get locked out for staying out past curfew, they run into Alex (Lubomir Bukovy) who directs them to a hostel in Slovakia where, he claims, they can find the best women. The group goes and has the time of their lives. Until Óli and Josh go missing. Paxton learns that they were taken to a factory where they were tortured and killed. Now Paxton himself is in the factory and must try to find a way out or realize the same fate as his friends.
At times this movie seems like nothing but torture porn, graphic images that make you cringe and dry heave. Overall the story seems lacking, until you really stop and think about human nature and realize that there’s a very good chance this shit is really going on somewhere over in Eastern Europe. There’s no looming sense of dread throughout the movie like in, say, Saw, and it times it does seem almost predictable. But at the same time if you put yourself in the characters’ shoes, you realize just how terrifying a situation they are actually in. As if hostels didn’t have a reputation for being sketchy before…
In the 2007 sequel, Beth (Lauren German), Whitney (Bijou Phillips) and Lorna (Heather Matarazzo) are on their way to Prague when they meet an eccentric foreigner named Axelle (Vera Jordanova) who convinces them to instead come with her to Slovakia to enjoy their one-of-a-kind hot springs. They check into a local hostel (dum dum dummmm) and head out to the local harvest festival, where Lorna disappears. Meanwhile, Stuart (Roger Bart) and Todd (Roger Burgi) have just signed up for an “elite hunting” club and are ready to test their merit. Stuart and Todd soon meet Whitney and Beth in a very familiar factory…
This movie is even more torture porn than the first. The “blood bath” scene is particularly unnecessarily gruesome. Don’t get me wrong, I like gore as much as the next guy, but in this case it just seemed a little over the top… I don’t know. This is basically the same movie with different characters, although it does delve a little bit more into the hunters who were basically faceless in the original. Maybe it was that or the predictability of it, but this movie seemed much slower than its predecessor. I saw the ending coming at about half an hour into the movie. This movie also shows the man behind the Elite Hunting team but doesn’t really go into any detail about who he is and his presence seems a little unnecessary or at least under utilized. This movie is an okay appendum to Hostel, but on its own it’s nothing spectacular.
