Hostel: Part II

Colour, 35 mm
USA, 2007, 100 min
Section: Midnight Screenings

Synopsis

Three young American students succumb to the allure of their new friend and leave Rome for a weekend trip together. Instead of a relaxing stay at a spa, however, they are taken into the “care” of the perverse organisation Elite Hunting, which provides wretches such as themselves for the games of rich deviants... games that go further than the kind of pain a normal person can imagine. The story follows up on the film Hostel, which thrilled fans of brutal horror, and at the same time, incensed Slovak audiences by showing their country as a place where things like that happen all the time. “I knew I had to set a higher standard,” explains director Eli Roth on his intention to satisfy the first type of audience with an even higher degree of brutality. The extremely bloody special effects were handled by make-up artists from the adaptation of the children’s fantasy Chronicles of Narnia. In addition to other familiar faces, local audiences will recognise the former Slovak Minister of Culture Milan Kňažko in the role of the Russian torturer Sasha.

About the director

Eli Roth (b. 1972, Boston, USA) was destined for the position of “saviour of the horror genre”, as Quentin Tarantino declared him, thanks to two underlying events: seeing the film Alien at the age of eight and his personal experience with a flesh-eating virus and dermatological diseases, which left him with enough material for his feature film debut Cabin Fever (2002). Before making this low-budget forest blood and guts movie, Roth made dozens of short films and graduated from the New York Film School with honours. In 2005 he released the brutal horror movie Hostel, about a group of backpackers in Slovakia who fall into the clutches of an organisation that allows its rich clients to unleash their sadistic desires. Its commercial success soon demanded a sequel. Roth is currently working on an adaptation of Stephen King’s horror novel Cell.