Eli Roth has painted me into a corner, only furthering my outrage over this cinematic anathema, which disgusts me for different reasons than what would obviously delight him. No, this is the part where Roth forces me to acknowledge my history as a gorehound sicko, that I've probably sought out (and even purchased) just as many splatter films, giallos, mondo docs, and other trashy grindhouse curiosities as he has. I know better than to vilify him as a nihilist or a dangerous filmmaker; both would be giving this immature, misguided brat far too much credit. At least provocateurs like Gaspar Noé, Michael Haneke, and Bruno Dumont point their cannons by standing behind their cynical belief systems, instead of cowardly and pre-emptively shielding themselves from, say, critical attacks of sexism and misogyny. Roth believes that depicting lady murderers, and featuring more full-frontal male bits (including the film's punchline, flaccid by twofold) than the copious girlie nudity he was slammed for in the first film, is enough to label this a tale of female empowerment. Yet he still proves how little he knows about women when a scumbag character abruptly barks at a prostitute to get off his lap, which Roth plays for a fratboy laugh.
Attempting to one-up the original, in which a trio of backpacking dudes in Eastern Europe find themselves auctioned off to be slaughtered by rich businessmen, Hostel: Part II fails in what amounts to its only distinct purpose: to smugly push the envelope of depravity farther than anyone else. Unlike the exploitation cheapies it mimics with a real budget and modern-day effects — or even contemporaries like Wolf Creek or High Tension — Roth's gore-nography makes for paltry horror, devoid of the suspense that defines the genre; we know exactly what's coming, essentially Hostel: Redux with female leads. It's the film's details then that reveal what a cheap poseur Roth is, such as the scareless scene in which a psychopath shoots a child for no other dramatic purpose than to get a rise out of an audience. Or, the particularly nasty inference that we're so excited by the idea of a girl's decapitation, that when a dungeon guard blocks the view of a security monitor just before veins are sliced, we’re expected to be bloodthirstily disappointed: "Awwww, man!"
