DVD Review: Hostel 2

Hostel 2 finds us following a group of sexy, young Americans making their way across Europe, meeting strange and exciting people along the way, when their trip goes terribly wrong. Wait a minute, this sounds exactly like Hostel Part 1. Indeed it does my friend, indeed it does. Unfortunately, I was left with a "been there, seen that" feeling after watching Hostel 2. While I really like Eli Roth's ambition for the genre and I still feel he has something really great up his sleeve, I can't help but feel like this is a cash-in. Replace the guys from the first movie with girls and hello, an all-new movie! While this film picks up almost immediately where the first left off, and while it does show us more into the minds of the people who actually run and participate in the festivities of the Elite Hunting Club, it's far from original. The difference between the Hostel and Saw series is that the creators of the Saw series strive to make each movie different and they're nicely complex, whereas Hostel is you get what you pay for. I didn't even think this film was bloodier than the first, which was really a surprise. The appeal of the original was the stark reality and brutality of the film, that this stuff does exist and how horrifying it is. With the second installment, that shock is lost and the film suffers for it. Hostel Part 2 chops up ** out of *****.