Not what i had hoped Hostel was a great film. It had a great tone throughout. The actors were semi okay, but the atmosphere it had was the best i have ever seen on celluloid. Along with others like "texas chainsaw, hills have eyes etc." Eli Roth is one of my favorite directors and was really hoping for this film to be awesome. I love "cabin fever" and "hostel", and the fake trailer for "grindhouse" was fantastic. This is a guy who loves horror films and it shows. The biggest reason i feel like this about Roth is that i'm a guy in the same situation. I love horror films, and it's those movies i wanna make. I wanna be the horror-guy :)
Anyway back to the reason i only gave this 5. It's the same as last time. The only thing new is the bidders. The actual killers. Which is cool enough, but i think the gruesome feeling drowns. I don't want to get to know the killers! I wanna fear them. Not laugh at their dialogs or their actions. Like the German in the the first one. Now that's a feared killer. Ruthless and disgusting. Not an all American dude who thinks "their the sane ones". I have had this vision of the film as being extremely gory. You out there who also thinks this, forget it. It's more humorous than creepy. We are sitting there looking at these two killers and listening to one of them say: "You have any idea what your gonna do in there?" Where the other replies: "you don't even wanna know". Then he roles over as soon as his victim get a little cut! He storms out of there and... well you'll see what happens. I felt cheated. Don't get me wrong. I'm not a sadist who likes to seeing people get butchered, but these films bring it out. You sort of wanna see the nasty. Which this film to some degree provide, but doesn't get to the finish-line. In a film like this i wanna "texas chainsaw:the beginning, Saw 3, hills have eyes" gore. It needs it!!! An what about the head of "elite hunting" killing one of the bubble gum members!???? What was the meaning with that? And why did the kids attack Lauren German? There's a lot of things in this film that seams weird but what tha hey.
Okay then...
Cool stuff :) Bringing Ruggero Deodato, director of the infamous "cannibal holocaust" in for a little scene was cool. Like bringing Takashi Miike in for the first one. Here again you see Roth's passion for horror-film. And he knows that only a small part of the world knows who Deodato is. I think it's much for himself. Like a dream come true directing one of the people who got him into horror.
I loved that he brought Hernandez back for the sequel. It needed it. I think the beginning is actually the best part of the film. And also the spa-scene is very good. I liked the camera-work better in the first one. It seemed more experimental in a way. This one was to regular i think. Maybe i need to see it again??? I said that the first part of the film was the better, and so i have to say that the worst part was the ending. That she could by her way out is BS!!! They would have shot both of them before she'd had a chance to give them an offer they couldn't refuse. I personally don't believe it.
I also felt that maybe the script was to short so they dragged every scene a little bit more than they should have.
To sum this up.. It needed more gore, better actors, a more throughout script and more suspense.
Also maybe i had to high hopes. I'm a big horror-fan, and have been looking forward for this one a long time. I love also love sequels :) And this year have been very poor i think. Considering the awful "hills have eyes 2".
I hope you read this comment Eli Roth since i am a huge fan of your work, and hope to see more of it. This comment is not to zest you in any way:) I also love your DVD commentary tracks which i listen to whenever i write on my own scripts. It's cool to hear about the business in another way then the way everybody else talks about it. Fortune and fame all the way. I've learned a lot listening to you talk about getting into the business and what you've been through. We've gone the same paths... Keep 'em coming Roth :)