The first Hostel was gruesome, sickening and disgusting. Yet I enjoyed it's superb craftsmanship and surprisingly good charecters. It's pretty much the same thing here, except with more plot. Hostel 2 goes in-depth with the whole technical aspect of the torture business; We see how the clients buy their victims, how they are treated upon arrival to Slovakia, and also some rules of the torturer alliance are explained. And instead of using the directorial trick Roth used in the first film, to make us believe we're watching a comedy for the first 50 minutes and then punch us in the face by showing a severed head, here he starts off with that severed head-type of feeling. We still do get a lengthy set-up involving a group of vixens partying and talking. Thank god for the fact that Roth didn't go the Tarantino way and make them talk about popular culture. Instead they just talk bullshit about their friends, just like in real life. And Roth is a good dialogue writer otherwise too, all the dialogue we get here feels spot-on and something that actual human beings might say. When it comes to the torturing scenes, I won't spoil anything. They are extremely creative, but besides a little scene around the end, they're almost goreless. In a movie like this you would expect a whole lot more of torture and such. But on the other hand two side characters, two torturers to be exact, are shown having some very interesting ethical conflicts with each other, and the transformation they both undergo as humans is rather interesting to see.
The performances are also rather nice. All the women are hot as hell, except for the have-to nerdy kid with the gigantic gums and teeth. We ALMOST get some HLA, but it turns out to be Roth teasing the living shit out of us. I don't like that too much, but there still is a rather large amount of nudity here to please... Well, just about anyone. The technical side is magnificent here, sporting truly disgusting special effects just like the previous movie. The score should also be noted to be great, even managing to add some drama into a scene that would contain none whatsoever withou the music, but the music still doesn't steal the attention away from the movie itself, which really is a rather interesting thing. That's exactly what movie scores should be like. The problem here is that besides the two torturers we never really go above the good movie-level. It's good all right, but Hostel Part II never really manages to rise above that level into greatness. Nonetheless, I doubt that we will ever get a better movie in the torture-genre than this.
But do you really want to see people get tortured for 30 minutes, and an hour of partying? If you can take it, Hostel: Part II is definately worth seeing. Otherwise, don't bother.
