Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Hostel II: A Global Warming Awareness Post
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 Would you believe that over the weekend I was sent to watch Hostel 2? I cannot stress the term "sent" enough. I was virtually forced at gun-point to get in my car, drive down to a cinema across the other fucking side of Melbourne, and watch the sequel for a movie who's original made me question the intelligence of the entire human race for a good three weeks after viewing it. It is amazing what we'll do to see our names in print.
Some of you may be aware of how dissatisfying the first installment of Hostel was for me. Those who saw it with me in an undisclosed Geelong lounge room some time last year will forever have that ringing in their ears; a sharp, piercing sound of me randomly shouting through out the film "What is the fucking point of this movie?! What is WRONG with these people?! This is just... ridiculous! How is this even remotely scary? Is there a 'pointless' section in the video shop? That is where this belongs. Why are you DOING THIS TO ME?"
I'm not going to delve too much into my thoughts on the first Hostel. I can tell you this though: I understood more about the first Hostel's storyline within the sequels opening 6 minutes than I did after watching the first Hostel TWICE. Now, there are spoilers ahead... ha, "spoilers!" I say that as if me telling you the - hem hem - "storyline" of this "movie" may actually upset you! ISN'T THAT HILARIOUS? I will say that having my best friend Ben with me made the movie-going experience slightly more enjoyable. Enjoyable because Ben & I feed off each others ridiculous comments during crap movies and spent most of Hostel 2 making ourselves laugh hysterically at things I doubt anyone else would (rightfully) get or understand. Thankfully, we were the only 2 people in the cinema, which made our infamous movie commentary all the more sweeter.
The main players this time are three All-American girls, as opposed to the group of guys from the last one? The question mark has been placed there purposely, because I seriously cannot quite recall. I swear to god if I ever end up in repressed memory therapy, all the ridiculous ins & outs about the first Hostel are probably going to storm out as a giant floodgate of crap. But as I was saying. Lauren German - who suspiciously looks like Milla Jovovich - plays the lead victim. Lauren German has previously featured in such roles as Girl In Wheelchair for the movie It Is Fine, Everything Is Fine!, Teenage Girl in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Lovestruck Woman in Down To You. Then there's Bijou Phillips (ask your parents), who hasn't made a movie worth watching since 2001's Bully. Heather Matarazzo, the crazy lesbian who is quite amazing (watch 1998's The Hairy Bird - "Up your ziggy with a wah-wah brush!" - and tell me she is not fabulous), also stars in this evident waste of time and, frustratingly, is the first of the girls to be killed off.
Not satisfied with killing the greatest acting talent on his set, director Eli Roth not only kills Heather off first, but does so in such a way, that it reeks of desperation. The sheer pointlessness and outright vulgarity of it is despicable. Heather's character is found screaming, naked (of course), hanging upside down from a harness over what appears to be a giant bathtub. A woman walks in, disrobes, lays completely naked in the bathtub underneath Heather, and proceeds to slash her apart, rubbing the pouring blood "sensually" over her breasts and soulless cunt as the poor tourist dies while she has a fingerbang. She licks her hands and moans in a sexual fashion, all as blood forces its way out of the tortured girls throat. Now I've seen people piss on each other on film for sexual gratification. I've seen some various fucked up shit in my time, but this was just so fucked up that all I could do was laugh. It was such a blatant 'shock tactic' that, in the end, it didn't do its job. It didn't shock me. It didn't make me feel sick. It didn't frighten the life out of me. It did, however, make me wish Eli Roth had never been shown how to operate a video camera though. It made me wish that I had told my boss to go fuck himself when he told me to watch this movie. It made me wish that I had just not gone, downloaded a pirated copy of Hostel 2 and saved myself the $30 in petrol I had to pay just to travel to the movie theater. It made me wish for the Australian MTV Video Music Awards. It made me want to take a sleeping pill for the remains of its duration. It made me want to turn to crack. As the movie continued, more people were killed or, at the very least, tortured. A child is shot for no apparent reason other than to fill a few more minutes.
Two of the non-important male idiots from Desperate Housewives also feature heavily in this film, and one of them even gets his dick cut off at the end. Which, as you could probably imagine, looks incredibly real and not at all fake in the slightest.
We are in the middle of an environmental epidemic. It is alarming that such a waste of time as Hostel 2 has been allowed to commit as many crimes as it has against the globe. The amount of carbon emissions this movie has generated disgusts me. The amount of black air released by the three-plus months of shooting this movie horrifies me. The number of flights the cast and crew will have made in order to promote this waste of time infuriates me. While we are all trying to save water by housing buckets in our showers, Eli Roth and Bijou fucking Phillips are blatantly killing trees and ice glaciers all over the world every time they set foot in an airport to promote this ridiculous shell of a movie. The amount of harm I have released into the poor environments soul driving to the theater, and driving BACK from the theater, alarms me. The amount of electricity consumed typing this review destroys me. I have the computer on, a light on, the television on for background noise and had even boiled the kettle for a cup of tea, in order to keep myself awake as I typed out this review. YES. THAT'S RIGHT. I BOILED THE KETTLE. Not only did I use water to fill it up with, I then went and switched the power point on to boil the fucker. Heart wrenching, isn't it?
Hostel 2 is a seriously disturbing global tragedy. Al Gore: your attention should be focussed on Eli Roth and the entire crew responsible for this hideous attempt at cinema, not the Bush Administration.
Glenn's ace fillum website Stale Popcorn contains one of the funniest Eli-Roth-Hostel related posts you will ever read on the internet, guaranteed. Clicky Clicky...
Labels: Screen Observation
7 Comments:
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- 4:28 AM | Paul said...
i think i did a brian and wee'd i laughed so hard. so much more entertaining than the film...
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- 11:10 AM | J'ason D'luv said...
So, two weekends ago I ditched gay pride early and was like, "Fuck this, I"m goin' to see Hostel II, y'all!" I'm pretty much a sucker for any cheap horror movie that comes along...
Anyway, fast forward to Weiner Dog from Welcome To The Dollhouse getting chopped in half, and some 8-year-old getting shot in the head about half an hour into the movie, and I walked out. Had there been a plot, or even something resembling a cohesive script with thought-out characters, I might have endured the gore. But, nah.
First movie I've walked out on since The Englishman Who Went Up A Mountain And Came Down A Hill back in '95...
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- 2:58 AM | Raj said...
I too was forced to go watch this movie as my boyfriend loves horror movies...he invited his friends too...if it weren't a group outing, I would hav fucking walked out too - Good on you J'ason! I have so much disrespect now for Heather Matarazzo for taking a role like this - I really like her as an actress, but did she need the money that bad? I was (and I'm not kidding) seriously disturbed after watching this film. Eli Roth is a sick fuck. This movie should be rated X and only because Quentin Tarantino has his damn name on it, it actually is considered theatre worththy. I'm not one to condone censorship - but this is a sick movie...there isn't any redemming excuse anyone can tell me to say this is art. Great post IAR! I couldn't agree more.
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- 8:26 PM | xolondon said...
Wait, you have disrespect for Heather M as an actress and you paid to see this piece of misogynist shit? I'm sure the director had all sorts of psuedo-intellectual reasons for that scene (note, I did not see it and won't), but these films will thrive if people pay to see them. What does it say abut our culture?
Don't I sound like a crazy conservative? See what Eli Roth did to ME?! The irony is that those same people probably SKIPPED to the theater for this movie while protesting every gay kiss on TV.
I am glad Adem's review has the gumption to put in the spoiler and warn people about what they can expect.
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- 8:46 PM | Adem IAR said...
hot & paul: *takes a bow*
j'ason: You're lucky you managed to walk out of ...an Englishman. I fell asleep watching it for Literature class.
raj: I think poor Heather just wanted to work. It's not as if the job offers are pouring in, god bless her.
xo: In the end, Eli Roth may have ruffled a set of feathers, but not enough for him to label his movie a success. He'll make money back on the DVD release, but the boom he expected in theaters fell flat on its arse. I believe a couple of reviewers are, to quote Joan Crawford, calling Roth "Box office poison."
Roth recently said on his MySpace it would be a couple of years before he makes another movie. Thank GOD.
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- 5:42 AM | Raj said...
hehehe - ok. I'll give Heather a break. I just hope that if she has kids...they never happen to find that dvd on the movie shelf. Never again will I just pop along to a movie with friends on random friday night without doing me research first. I knew it was going to be scary, but I didn't quite understand why someone would make a movie LIKE THAT. I'm squirming just thinking about it again. You know what pisses me off too...how many movies actually get made in Slovakia?!!! That's right, not only is Hostel II a global warming alarm, but I'm sure it's going to kill the tourism rate in Slovakia so much that all their hotels and real hostels are gonna go under.
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