Filmmaker Eli Roth tries to enliven the formula, but this sequel loses the grim surprise of the original without adding much new in terms of plotting or gory set pieces.

Full Review | Jul 23, 2008

Roth's dark humor and lacerating view of human weakness sometimes suggest George Romero; what he lacks is Romero's stubborn belief in personal morality.

| Oct 23, 2007

Sadly, the director's proven creative finesse has given way to boring self-imitation. Hostel: Part II gives us the same premise as the first film, changing genders and little else.

Full Review | Jul 11, 2007

Oh, do grow up.

| Jul 7, 2007

It is pretty boring. But then the gore is even worse to watch.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jun 29, 2007

Hostel: Part II does succumb to mere ghoulishness in the last-reel bloodbath, but up to that point its moral tension feels horribly persuasive.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 29, 2007

Hostel 2 is feebleness itself, poorly constructed and deeply unterrifying, a let-down after the giddy shockfest of the first film last year.

| Jun 29, 2007

Everything, save the bloody third act, is handled in a rudimentary fashion.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 29, 2007

It pains me to admit that Hostel: Part II is a slicker package than the craven original. That doesn't excuse the fact that it's torture pornography for morons.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jun 29, 2007

Roth's slick shock-'em-up sequel is a dispiritingly traditional splat of gristly Grand Guignol. It's tooled up to outrage, but ultimately numbs rather than grips.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 29, 2007

like the film's pair of conflicted snuff customers, you're only getting what you paid your money for.

Full Review | Jun 27, 2007

All the realism of an abbatoir.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 26, 2007

Both nubile females and alpha-male douche bags are on the receiving end of pain (that's supposed to nullify accusations of misogyny, is it?), but really, we're all the victims here.

| Original Score: 2/6 | Jun 16, 2007

Eli Roth's Hostel: Part II is an authentic real-world creep show -- better, if anything, than its predecessor.

| Original Score: B | Jun 13, 2007

The movie is almost totally devoid of suspense, which is one of the marks of a true exploitation film. Why waste time with a bunch of false scares and tension, when you can go straight to the pain and suffering?

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 12, 2007

There's a keen intelligence behind all that gleeful degradation and it pays off in a finish that's at once ironic, satirical, and perversely satisfying.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jun 9, 2007

Ends up there is a moral to the story, one sure to delight the bamboozled pseudo-intellectuals who laughably defended Hostel as a geo-political critique of American arrogance and the culture of torture.

| Jun 8, 2007

No doubt about it: Roth is a talented guy. But it would be nice to see him use his skills in the service of something other than more sadistic, pandering, pornographic violence.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 8, 2007

Any semblance of suspense quickly gives way to buzz saws, drill bits and sickles. And the movie ends so abruptly, one has to think the filmmakers ran out of either money or prosthetic body parts.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Jun 8, 2007

Some might call it a mess, but, unlike the average horror sequel that's completely devoid of new ideas, this is a mess that you just can't stop watching.

Full Review | Jun 8, 2007