Hostel: Part II

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Hostel: Part II

Final U.S. movie poster for the film
Directed by Eli Roth
Produced by Scott Spiegel
Boaz Yakin
Quentin Tarantino
Written by Eli Roth
Starring Lauren German
Bijou Phillips
Heather Matarazzo
Jay Hernandez
Jordan Ladd
Roger Bart
Vera Jordanova
Richard Burgi
Music by Nathan Barr
Cinematography Milan Chadima
Editing by George Folsey Jr.
Brad E. Wilhite
Distributed by Screen Gems
LIONSGATE
Release date(s) June 8, 2007
Running time 94 min.
Country United States
Language English
Budget $10.2 million[1]
Gross revenue $35,619,521
Preceded by Hostel
Followed by Hostel: Part III

Hostel: Part II is the 2007 sequel to writer-director Eli Roth's 2005 horror film Hostel. The film was released on June 8, 2007 in the United States. Like its predecessor, the film is set in Slovakia and centers on a facility in which rich clients pay to torture and kill kidnapped victims. The film performed poorly at the box office totaling just $17 million by the end of its theatrical run[2] whereas the original made $19 million in its opening weekend alone. However, it had beaten its budget. Eli Roth shot scenes for the movie in the Prague online brothel Big Sister and in Iceland, the Blue Lagoon.[3]

Contents

[edit] Plot

About a week after the events of Hostel, the film opens with Paxton (Jay Hernandez) in seclusion with his girlfriend Stephanie (Cabin Fever's Jordan Ladd). The two argue, and the next morning Stephanie wakes up to discover Paxton's headless body seated at the kitchen table with their cat licking blood from his neck. Meanwhile, in Slovakia, a mysterious package is delivered to Sasha (Milan Kňažko), the owner of Elite Hunting. From the reaction of Sasha's hounddogs and the size of the box, it is left to the audience to deduce that this package contains Paxton's head. In Italy, art students Beth (Lauren German), Whitney (Bijou Phillips) and Lorna (Heather Matarazzo) are convinced by Axelle (Vera Jordanova), a nude model they are sketching, to join her on a vacation to a luxurious spa. The four travel to a small Slovakian village and check into the local hostel, where the desk clerk uploads their passport photos to an auction website, where hotshot American businessman Todd (Richard Burgi) bids on Whitney and Beth for himself and his passive best friend Stuart (Roger Bart).

Later that night, at the village's "Harvest Festival", Lorna discovers that Beth has inherited a vast fortune from her mother. Stuart approaches Beth and the two share a friendly, if awkward, conversation. An intoxicated Lorna leaves to go on a boat ride with Roman, a charismatic local, who proceeds to kidnap Lorna with the help of two accomplices. A local walks up to Beth and asks her for a dance, she declines. He responds with "I could have helped you." Beth doesn't understand and shortly afterward the hostel's clerk approaches and tells her "He won't bother you anymore." Beth and Whitney leave the party, while Axelle volunteers to stay behind and wait for Lorna.

The next morning the three girls head to the local spa to relax. Basking in the relaxing atmosphere of the hot springs, Beth is able to fall somewhat at ease and dozes off. Meanwhile, a naked Lorna is shackled upside-down in a large room, where a woman named Mrs. Bathory (Monika Malacova) enters, undresses, and lies beneath Lorna. She then proceeds to slowly kill Lorna by cutting her with a long scythe and bathing in her blood, then slitting her throat with a sickle. At the spa, Beth awakens to find herself alone and her belongings stolen. As she looks for her friends, she notices several men approaching and surrounding her. Fearing for her life, she climbs over the spa's walls. While making her escape, she is ambushed by the "Bubblegum Gang", a gang of violent children. Before they are able to descend upon her, however, Axelle and Sasha appear and ward them away from her. Axelle escorts a flustered but somewhat relieved Beth to their vehicle. With Axelle and Beth away, Sasha confronts the children. He is angered that they interfered with his "business operations." As punishment, and to warn against future transgressions, Sasha draws out his gun and has one of the children brought forward before him. Sasha summarily kills the boy, and the rest of the gang flees.

After being taken to Sasha's mansion, Beth realizes that Sasha and Axelle are responsible for Whitney and Lorna's disappearances after seeing the men who tried to kidnap her at the spa coming up the stairs of Sasha's home. She tries to hide and discovers a room filled with severed heads, including Paxton's, before being captured and taken to the factory. At the factory, a sobbing Whitney is strapped to a chair in one of the cells while an old woman applies makeup to her face. Whitney severely bites the woman's nose and escapes, only to be captured by the guards.

Stuart then enters his room where Beth is strapped to a chair with a sack over her head. Stuart looks around the room at the tools with horror. He then takes the sack off Beth's head and explains about Elite Hunting. He then unties her from the chair and lets her think she is escaping. He then punches Beth in the face. Whitney is taken to Todd's cell and strapped to a chair, where he taunts and terrorizes her with a circular saw. Overwhelmed with excitement, Todd accidentally cuts into her face with a power saw, maiming her, which disturbs him so much that he now realizes the horrors of Elite Hunting. He tries to leave, claiming he no longer wants to kill her. The guard explains that he must kill her if he wants to leave; when he refuses, the guards set the dogs on him, killing him for violating his contract.

The guards then bandage Whitney and show her photograph to other clients in adjoining cells, offering her at a discount. They go to a room where a cannibalistic client (Ruggero Deodato) puts in his bid. He is then shown cannibalising Miroslav (Stanislav Ianevski) who Whitney met at the Harvest festival. The young man's right foot is gone and on his left, several layers of flesh are missing. The man continues to cut off pieces of the young man's flesh with a knife and fork and eat it while listening to Habenera from Carmen. The guards then move to another, where the man bids. He is shown torturing a man on a caged bed that electrocutes the victim.

The deranged and sadistic Stuart, now torturing Beth and blaming her for his friend's death, accepts the offer and kills Whitney. As he returns to finish with Beth, she seduces him into releasing her from the chair, then fights him off as he lies on her and chains Stuart to the chair. Beth grills Stuart for the code to the cell, then sticks a needle in his ear when he refuses to tell her. Stuart tells Beth the code, but she still needs to be buzzed through the door, which inadvertently summons Sasha and the guards to the room. Beth offers to buy her freedom with part of her inheritance. When Sasha explains to her that she must kill somebody to leave, Beth cuts off Stuart's genitals and tosses them to one of the guard dogs; Beth then orders Stuart to be left to bleed to death as he screams in pain. Per the standard contract, Beth is given an Elite Hunting tattoo. In the closing sequence, Axelle is lured from the village festival into the woods by the Bubblegum Gang, where Beth surprises and beheads her, allowing the gang to play football (soccer) with her head. The film then ends on a shot of Axelle's decapitated body with the Bubblegum Gang dancing in the background.

[edit] Cast

Eli Roth, his brother Gabriel, and co-producer Dan Frisch make cameo appearances as heads on sticks.
Ruggero Deodato made a cameo appearance as a cannibalistic client.

[edit] Marketing

An initial movie poster for the film.

Lions Gate showed the first 5 minutes of Hostel 2 before select screenings of Bug, which opened on May 25, 2007.[4] In one of the trailers the narrator says "It's only a movie," which was the tagline to the controversial horror film The Last House on the Left directed by Wes Craven. It was promoted in commercials on TV as having "the most shocking ending in horror movie history".

Director Eli Roth and cast member Bijou Phillips attended UFC 71 during which the movie was promoted.

At the date of the U.S. premiere of the movie on June 8, 2007, interviews with the Hostel 2 director Eli Roth were released at Big Sister[5].

[edit] Reaction

The film was very shocking for some of the countries in Europe, this is one of the reasons why some of the footage was banned.

[edit] Box office

The film was considered by many a box office bomb.[6][7][8] It opened in 6th place with only $8.2 million and went on to total $17.6 million by the end of its theatrical run. The film made more than its budget of $10.2 million.[9] Comparatively, the original, with a much more modest budget of $4.8 million, opened at #1 with $19 million ($2 million more than Part II's final gross) and went on to make over $47 million.[10]

Director Eli Roth blamed piracy for the film's box office results.[11]

[edit] Critical reception

Critical reaction to Hostel: Part II, like the first film, was mixed, with Metareviews site Rotten Tomatoes showed a 44% overall (rotten) rating, with the "Cream of the Crop" scoring it at a 47% overall.[12]

[edit] Restriction

The film has been restricted to adults in most countries. However, it has been cut in Germany, Malaysia and Singapore, and the "German Extended Version" (in which Lorna's torture and death scene was edited out) version has subsequently been banned in Germany. The court in Munich decided that releasing the movie in this or the uncut version is to be punished[13]. Only a heavily edited "not under 18" version is still available. It was banned in New Zealand, after the distributor refused to cut the scene showing the torture of Lorna to receive an R18 certificate. The film, with the scene in question edited out, was later released on DVD on 30 April 2008.

On October 8 2007, the film was cited in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom as an example where stills from the film could be illegal to possess under the proposed law to criminalise possession of "extreme pornography". MP Charles Walker claimed that although he had never seen the film, he was "assured by trusted sources" that it was "From beginning to end, it depicts obscene, misogynistic acts of brutality against women — an hour and a half of brutality".[14]

Writer and attorney Julie Hilden defended Hostel Part II critically and artistically in her essay "Why are critics so hostile to Hostel Part II?".[15]

Former Slovak minister of culture and actor Milan Kňažko played Sasha, the head of the torture ring. He also defended the first film.

[edit] Elizabeth Báthory

The scene in which a woman tortures and bathes in the blood of a victim is a reference to a 16th century serial killer named Elizabeth Báthory, (identified in credits). Regarded as one of the most prolific serial killers in history, Báthory tortured and murdered up to 612 victims. In popular mythology, her blood-lust was driven by a belief that bathing in the blood of virgins would retain her youth. Although part of Hungary at the time, Čachtice Castle, Báthory's home, is now in Slovakia - the country in which Hostel is set.

[edit] Hostel: Part III

In June 2008, it was announced that Scott Spiegel, one of the producers of Hostel and Hostel: Part II, was in talks to write and direct a third film in the series. As of August 13, 2008, little is known of this film, aside from the fact that it will most likely be a direct-to-DVD release.[16]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Hostel @ BoxOfficeMojo.com
  2. ^ Hostel Part II (2007)
  3. ^ Big Sister blog, 15 October 2006; Big Sister blog, 17 October 2006
  4. ^ joblo.com/5-minutes-of-hostel-2
  5. ^ Big Sister Pressroom
  6. ^ http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2007/06/death_of_horror.html
  7. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/11/movies/11hostel.html?_r=1
  8. ^ http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jun/09/entertainment/et-horror9
  9. ^ http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=hostel2.htm
  10. ^ http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=hostel.htm
  11. ^ http://www.cinematical.com/2007/06/16/eli-roth-talks-hostel-ii-box-office-blames-rampant-piracy-sa/
  12. ^ "Hostel: Part II". Rotten Tomatoes. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hostel_2/. Retrieved 2007-11-17. 
  13. ^ http://www.blog.beck.de/2008/07/24/beschlagnahme-des-filmes-hostel-ii-extended-version/
  14. ^ Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill: 8 Oct 2007: House of Commons debates (TheyWorkForYou.com)
  15. ^ Julie Hilden, "Free Speech and the Concept of Torture Porn: Why Are Critics so Hostile to Hostel II?".
  16. ^ http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/12740

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Works by Quentin Tarantino
Written and directed
Reservoir Dogs (1992) · Pulp Fiction (1994) · Four Rooms (segment) (1995) · Jackie Brown (1997) · Kill Bill (2003, 2004) · Death Proof (2007) · Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Written
Directed
ER : "Motherhood" (1995) · CSI : "Grave Danger" (2005) · Sin City (guest director) (2005)
Other work
Past Midnight (1992) · Killing Zoe (1994) · Curdled (1996) · Daltry Calhoun (2005) · Hostel (2005) · Hostel: Part II (2007) · Sukiyaki Western Django (2007) · Hell Ride (2008)
Film soundtracks
Abandoned
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostel:_Part_II"