| Hostel: Part II | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Eli Roth |
| Produced by | Scott Spiegel Boaz Yakin Quentin Tarantino |
| Written by | Eli Roth |
| Based on | Characters by Eli Roth |
| Starring | Lauren German Roger Bart Heather Matarazzo Bijou Phillips Richard Burgi |
| Music by | Nathan Barr |
| Cinematography | Milan Chadima |
| Editing by | George Folsey, Jr. |
| Studio | Raw Nerve Next Entertainment International Production Company |
| Distributed by | Screen Gems Lionsgate |
| Release date(s) | June 8, 2007 |
| Running time | 94 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English Slovak Italian Czech |
| Budget | $10.2 million[1] |
| Box office | $35,619,521 |
Hostel: Part II is a 2007 horror film by writer-director Eli Roth that is the sequel to the 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[1] whereas the original made $19 million in its opening weekend alone. Eli Roth shot scenes for the movie in the Prague online brothel Big Sister and at the Blue Lagoon in Iceland.[2]
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Shortly after the events of Hostel, Paxton (Jay Hernandez) is suffering from nightmares and lives in seclusion with his girlfriend Stephanie (Jordan Ladd). The two get into an argument where Stephanie denounces Paxton's paranoia as insufferable and exaggerated. She awakes the next morning to find her boyfriend decapitated. An unmarked box (presumably containing Paxton's severed head) is then delivered to Elite Hunting boss Sasha (Milan Kňažko), as he relaxes at an outdoor cafe with his bloodhounds.
In Italy, three art students, wealthy Beth (Lauren German), tough Whitney (Bijou Phillips), and outcast 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, and American businessman Todd (Richard Burgi) submits the winning 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, albeit awkward, conversation. An intoxicated Lorna is taken for a boat ride, resulting in her kidnapping. Beth and Whitney leave the party, while Axelle volunteers to stay behind and wait for Lorna. Whitney wants to sleep with local Miroslav (Stanislav Ianevski) but Beth talks her into calling it a night.
The next morning, Lorna finds herself naked, gagged, hands shackled behind her back, ankles shackled, and hanging upside down in a large room, where a woman named Mrs. Bathory (Monika Malacova) enters, undresses, and lies beneath Lorna. She then uses a long scythe to repeatedly slash Lorna's back and torso, and revels in bathing in Lorna's blood, before fatally slashing her victim's throat. Beth, Whitney, Axelle and Miroslav go to the hot springs spa to relax, where Beth falls asleep. She then 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 flees, but is ambushed by a gang of violent street children. However, Axelle and Sasha appear and ward them away from her. Sasha then murders one of the children as punishment.
At a factory, Whitney is strapped to a chair in one of the cells. She attempts to escape, however, since Paxton's escape, the security at the factory has increased significantly. Beth is taken to a mansion, where she finds a room filled with heads, with Paxton's head at the center of the room. She is then taken to a room in the factory and is strapped to a chair. Stuart enters and explains about Elite Hunting. He unties her from the chair and almost decides to escape with her but then knocks her out. Whitney is taken to Todd's cell and strapped to a chair, where he terrorizes her with a circular saw. He accidentally saws through part of her face, causing him to realize the horrors of Elite Hunting. He tries to leave, but the guard explains that he must kill her if he wants to leave; when he refuses, the guards turn savage dogs loose and they maul Todd to death. The Elite Hunting representatives try to find someone to finish with Whitney, inquiring whether an Italian cannibal who is eating Miroslav alive and a man who has his victim chained to an electrified metal bed are interested.
Stuart, now torturing Beth and blaming her for Todd's death, takes the offer on Whitney and decapitates her with a machete (although the scene is edited so the fatal blow is not shown). As he returns to finish off Beth, she seduces him into releasing her from the chair, then fights him off and chains Stuart to the chair, driving a needle into his ear canal and screaming for the gun-drawing guards to "get Sasha!". Beth makes the Elite Hunting boss an offer: she will pay the full fee to become a customer. When she is told that she must kill somebody to leave, Stuart stupidly insults Beth. She cuts off Stuart's genitals, leaving him 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 street children, where Beth surprises and beheads her, allowing the gang to play football with her head.
Director Eli Roth, his brother Roger, and co-producer Dan Fisner make cameo appearances as heads on sticks. Ruggero Deodato makes an appearance as a cannibalistic client. Eyþór Guðjónsson, Rick Hoffman, Jana Kaderabkova, and Barbara Nedeljáková make flashback cameos at the beginning of the film as their original roles in the first film.
Lionsgate showed the first 5 minutes of Hostel 2 before select screenings of Bug, which opened on May 25, 2007.[3]
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 film was promoted.
At the date of the U.S. premiere on June 8, 2007, interviews with the Hostel 2 director Eli Roth were released at Big Sister.[4]
The film was considered by many a box office bomb.[5][6][7] 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 grossed over its $10.2 million budget.[1] Comparatively, the original, with a more modest $4.8 million budget, opened at #1 with $19 million ($2 million more than Part II's final gross) and went on to make over $47 million.[8]
Director Roth blamed piracy for the film's box office results.[9]
Critical reaction to Hostel: Part II was mainly mixed, with Metareviews site Rotten Tomatoes showed a 44% overall (rotten) rating, with the "Cream of the Crop" scoring it at a 43% overall. The sites consensus states "Offering up more of the familiar sadism and gore, Hostel: Part II will surely thrill horror fans."[10]
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 is still not shown completely[11]) 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.[12] 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 April 30, 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 "From beginning to end, it depicts obscene, misandry acts of brutality against women — an hour and a half of brutality".[13]
Writer and attorney Julie Hilden defended Hostel Part II critically and artistically in her essay "Why are critics so hostile to Hostel: Part II?".[14]
Former Slovak Minister of Culture and actor Milan Kňažko played Sasha, the head of the torture ring. He also defended the first film.
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. In July 2009, Eli Roth confirmed that he would not be directing Hostel: Part III.[15] Total Film later reported that Roth would be involved, albeit as producer only, and that the film will abandon the European locations of the previous films in favor of an American setting. A trailer for Hostel: Part III was released in October 2011 confirming the film's Las Vegas setting.
A direct-to-DVD release, Hostel: Part III was released on December 27, 2011 (US) and January 18, 2012 (Europe).[16]
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