After a smashing 82 million box office on less than a five million dollar budget Roth quickly conceived a sequel. No doubt due to the financial success of the first film, Roth got over twice the budget of the original film for the sequel.

Unfortunately, the returns of the second film were less than half of the original Hostel. Maybe people couldn’t endure the Roth torture again. The film was banned in several countries, which may have led to a work print of the film being released online. It led to many people pirating the film.

The sequel picks up right after the original film. Almost a prologue involving Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and his fate in the aftermath of the first film. Then cut to an art class in Rome, Italy with three female college classmates.

They befriend the nude model from class, and then meet again on the train in Italy who convinces them to check out the Spas in Slovakia. You can guess what happens from here.

The change to three female protagonists provides a new type of anxiety. Because we know what horrors await the three women, everyone they encounter becomes suspicious to the audience. It puts us in a woman’s mindset.

This is coming from a cis male. Nevertheless, we the audience can understand what it is like for a woman to travel in a foreign country surrounded by people they do not know. This came one year before Taken before this thought became a popular concern in the societal consciousness.

That fear is not there in the first film because they are guys, we believe consciously or subconsciously that they can take care of themselves, but we don’t perceive that of women. So the first 30 minutes put you on the edge of your seat.

A major change in the story structure from the first one is this time we follow two men who have paid for the service. We see a creepy montage of rich white men bidding on the three women as if they were second-hand items on eBay.

The man that wins the bid is also paying for his friend to come as well. Played by Richard Burgi and Roger Bart. They represent two sides of the toxic masculinity coin. Richard’s character is loud, brash, all-American asshole.

He puffs his chest out and thinks everyone else is there to serve him. He hates women, proven by him gleefully laughing as he waves a circular saw in his victim’s face. Yet, when it comes to the act and blade meets skin, he retracts in terror and runs. He is all bark and no bite. 

The flip side to that coin is Roger Bart’s character. He is not the rich man Richard is. He lives in a normal house with two kids and has a second mortgage on his house. It seems like through the whole film he does not want to go through with this.

Even when he gets into the room he is looking for a way to get him and his potential victim out of there. Until she starts to say he is not like these other men, which gets under his insecure skin. He begins to mumble about his wife.

Beth (his victim) tries to say she is not his wife through her ball gag. It is then he realizes he can take out all the anger and frustration he has with his wife on Beth. It’s a terrifying moment because I bet this sentiment is more common than people would realize.

Roger’s character represents a much more dangerous toxic masculinity because he is insecure blaming everyone else for his shortcomings and how his life has turned out. A man taking his rage out on a woman rather than go to therapy, is all too real, unfortunately.

The main issue with this sequel is the color grading. Back in the 2000s for some reason, many films did harsh color grading with heavy saturation. In the new HD feature with heavy color saturation, all these films look terrible now.

A film with twice the budget should not look worse than the lower budget “older” film.

The toxic masculinity of insecure men and showing a woman’s anxiety about every man is a potential danger age very well in this film. The kills have an upgrade with the larger budget, it’s clear Roth is still in creative mode here.

4/5 Stars