"Three American college students studying abroad are lured to a Slovakian hostel, and discover the grim reality behind it."
I liked Cabin Fever a lot and I thought Hostel was a lot of fun. Now Eli Roth tries to take himself seriously and a create a film that will stand the test of time and leave everyone in awe. How do I know this? Eli Roth hasn't shut up about this one being amazing and how it would shock everyone and how the ending would be one of the greatest horror scenes of all time. He isn't right about any of those statements at all.
Hostel 2 is about three girls who once again happen to check into the wrong hostel at the wrong time and etc... This is basically the same as the first film. The movie is also about two businessmen getting into the club and experiencing their first kill, who happen to be two of the three girls. This sounds like a great premise and a real good point for Eli Roth to truly prove himself.
He doesn't and what we get is a bad attempt at trying to achieve depth. All the characters are cliched characters that we have seen over and over again. We get the smart girl, the nerdy timid girl, and the party girl. As for the two businessmen we get an asshole type of guy and a nice guy who, you guessed it, isn't sure if he can go through with it all. Even though these characters are all cliched they are a good starting point for making something at least interesting with them. Roth doesn't at all with the 3 girls and at the end of the movie they are still cliched characters.
As for the two businessmen Roth fails badly at creating something original and great with them. The whole aspect of telling the story through their eyes sound like it would be great but it isn't. When the characters reach their emotional climax it feels odd and out of place instead of shocking and interesting.
As for the end, the gore, and what not...it also fails to deliver. I'm not a gorehound but I know that some people are and after reading Eli Roth's comments about the violence in his film being great I was curious to see what he would do. He doesn't even deliver the gore which was really shocking to me. There are few "gore scenes" and none of them deliver as great as Roth makes them out to be.
Now as for the ending, it doesn't deliver at all. Roth decides to build up characters instead of going for gore scenes every couple of minutes, like in Hostel. The thing is that since he fails at that we are actually looking forward for the climax that Eli Roth builds up through out the whole film. At least the climax should be great, right? There is no way that Roth can mess this up, right? Well he sadly does. When certain twists happen they are not shocking since they could be seen coming for a long time. When certain characters take a sudden turn its more laughable than intense or scary and when the final gore scene comes that Eli Roth has been talking about so much finally plays out it is rather lame and a cheap gag that Roth feels would have left a lot of people squirming and going "owwwwwwww" It instead left me going "that's it?" as did the movie as a whole.
Hostel Part II is a failed attempt of creating something greater than it thinks it is. I'm amazed at the delusional mindset that Roth is in towards this movie. It's nowhere near a great film and it's nowhere near of making any cut of great horror movies, both past and modern ones. Although I had problems with this film I am still curious to see what Roth will do next. I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt and see what he will do with adapting Cell.
As for now Roth fell on his face with this one. At least to me he did but I'm sure there are enough people who will eat this up and name it great and will still continue to praise Eli Roth as the modern king of horror which should be great for him and only help feed his cockiness some more.
- *1/2
No comments:
Post a Comment