Three American girls (Lauren German, Bijou Phillips, Heather Matarrazzo) on holiday in Europe are enticed to Slovakia by an Italian girl they've met on their travels, who is setting them up for their torture and deaths by the organisation set up to allow sickos to indulge in this.

Eli Roth's follow up to his disturbing and gory film of 2005 delivers much of the same in terms of extreme gore and a desire to shock, if not offend audiences. However, it does explore a concept only touched on in the first film. But first the gore.

The potentially most offensive scene involves the naked woman who lies in a tub beneath a naked, strung upside down Matarrazzo. She precedes to slash her back from side to side revelling in the blood that pours down and eventually drenches her whilst she gets off. This scene is perhaps inspired by Countess Dracula (1972), where the lead bathes in the blood of murdered virgins, as here Matarrazzo is presented as a naïve virgin. The final scene of gore involves a man's penis being sliced off in full view before being thrown to dogs which pays homage to various Italian cannibal films of the 70s and 80s (e.g. Cannibal Ferox 1980) where the mutilation of genitals was almost standard. However, what's more disturbing than the violence in Hostel 2 (like the first film), except fleshed out here much further, is the depiction of the rich, around the world, bidding on German, Phillips and Matarrazzo via the Internet for the 'privilige' to torture and kill them. This is a more grim extension of the concept explored in The Most Dangerous Game (1932), but somehow feels more realistic and possible today. That such people exist is likely (aside from whether such a thing has actually happened in the real world or not) and this is what makes it disturbing. How far and how low would some people be willing to go? Roth is going for a comment on the evils of excess and rampant capitalism gone mad. The fact that we follow two of the winning bidders (two American businessman), one all talk, the other seemingly hesitant and in two minds about what he's agreed to, brings the film a decidedly different approach than the first film. However, somehow Hostel 2 is ultimately not as good(at least for me). Perhaps it's the lack of real mystery and surprise that the first film had and that none of the three lead characters are particularly likable. Hence, we don't particularly care for them and it's almost annoying that German escapes because she's wealthy. Of course, this is a further comment that Roth wants to make about capitalism, but the point is laboured by this stage. A nice touch (as the first film did with Takashi Miike) is the cameo by Ruggero Deodato, director of Cannibal Holocaust (1980), as a cannibal. A must for fans of gore. Others will no doubt wonder why such films are allowed to exist.

In "Hostel", a group of young men end up at a hostel in Slovakia that kidnaps people for its clients to torture and kill. Now, a group of American girls ends up at the same hostel. Will they meet the same fate, or perhaps they'll have more luck? And what ever became of the kids from the first film?

Full disclosure: I didn't like "Hostel" very much. I loved "Cabin Fever", but grew weary of Eli Roth after his second feature. So "Hostel 2" sat unreviewed for several month before I finally broke down and watched it. Guess what? We have a sequel that eclipses the original in every way -- this one is pretty amazing. Relying far less on torture and excessive nudity (although both are present here), we get an actual plot, likable characters and best of all a glimpse into the other side.

Torture clients aren't just faceless monsters in "Hostel 2", but real people with hopes, dreams and fears. There is a depth and complexity to them that allows us to almost sympathize with their angle, no matter how reprehensible they may be. (Some of them are still just ruthless killers, of course.) At one point, a potential murderer raises a philosophical point posed in the past by Hobbes, Rousseau and Locke: without laws, how is man naturally going to respond to others in a state of nature? To some degree, they attempt to answer this question. ("Battle Royale" also addressed this, though the characters in that film were in a more forced and less natural environment.)

Focusing on a female cast rather than male one really helps, I think. Let's assume the audience (mostly male) wants to see beautiful women, which I think is a safe assumption. In the first film, to accomplish this the boys had to come across numerous loose women with no character development. Visually appealing, sure -- but no substance. By having a female cast, the male audience gets to watch the young ladies the majority of the time while also developing a plot and character motivations. Nudity is less prevalent (but still present). Roth is fully capable of telling a story, as this movie shows, and I'm glad he chooses this over the shock value of sex and torture.

The cast is interesting. Rick Hoffman, who was "The American client" in the first film, returns as "the American businessman". He is something of an anti-hero. While we ought to be against him (he's after the protagonists), the film gives us the point of view that he's just being human, no matter how awful he comes across. Another great cameo is Ruggero Deodato, the maestro of Italian cannibal films ("Last Cannibal World" and "Cannibal Holocaust"). He appears, appropriately, as the Italian cannibal. His scene was not initially in the script (Roth showed up on Deodato's set personally to invite him to Prague) but I think it really clinches the deal of providing us a film that is both new and also giving homage to the classic.

Although you have to see "Hostel" to fully understand "Hostel 2", I think the punishment is worth the reward. For everything the first film lacked, the second makes up for it and then some. Romance, comedy, torture... a truly well-rounded horror film, which is a growing rarity in this age of shock cinema. Highly recommended.

For anyone with a real objective taste in movies, including those based on terror, would know after watching hostel part 2 that it is way better than the first installment. Hostel 2 not only a better ending than the typical horror (is it really over) ending of part 1 but it also has a more consistent story line, better acting, descent lead character development and interesting plot twist. I would highly recommend this film to any fans of the handful of truly good horror/thriller movies out there such as (Saw1 and the Ring). If you watched hostel 1 and thought it was an over rated farce of a movie like I did, then watch part 2, you wont be disappointed.