Hostel 2 (DVD, 2007, Unrated Director's Cut)

Eli Roth's 'Hostel' was one of the Best Horror Films; a brutal rollercoaster ride by a Writer-Director who exhibited both the intellect of a film studies professor and the enthusiasm of a teenage fan.
The combination serves Roth well again with 'Hostel: Part II' a smart, stylish and extremely violent follow-up that shatters the limits of the "R" ratings like its characters transgress the boundaries of conventional morality. Roth follows the model of the greatest sequel of all time, 'The Godfather Part II', by creating a parallel structure in which two separate storylines complement and comment upon one another.
The primary focus is on Beth (Lauren German), Whitney (Bijou Phillips), and Lorna (Heather Matarazzo), American Art Students on vacation who take a stranger's advice and alter their plans to attend a spa in Slovakia. Of course, as anyone who has seen the first 'Hostel' knows, the girls are headed not to a spa but to a torture chamber; where wealthy customers pay for the privilege of murdering with impunity.
Roth's cleverest conceit in 'Hostel: Part II' is to balance the girls' story with the darkly comic journey of Stuart (Roger Bart) and Todd (Richard Burgi), two Americans who travel to Slovakia to kill the girls after "buying" them in an exclusive International Auction. The uniformly strong performances in the film allow Roth to take his time, steadily raising the tension as he moves back and forth between the killers and their unsuspecting prey; when the two stories intersect for the first time it's absolutely chilling, and when they collide head-on at the climax it makes for one of the most outrageous and entertaining gross-out endings in the History of American Horror.
'Hostel: Part II' doesn't operate on exactly the same levels as its precursor. The less sympathetic male protagonists in the first movie allowed 'Hostel' to work the arrogance and ignorance of the guys as they set out to sexually conquer Europe. Part of the movie's raw power for American Audiences came from the exploitation of our ever growing fears about being in too-deep in a land; not our own.
'Hostel: Part II' mostly limits its text to the Stuart and Todd storyline, making wry comments about globalization and materialism that are as amusing and harrowingly effective; as the rich previous film.
Roth also gains as much as he loses: by making his heroines more complex and sympathetic, he overcomes the inevitable problem of predictability that afflicts nearly all sequels. The fact that we know what is in store for the girls doesn't make the story any less scary, because we like them so much that we're more emotionally invested in their fate. Beth, Whitney, and Lorna have more dimension than the 'Porky's'-esque horny guys from the first 'Hostel'.
Throughout, Roth deftly juggles tones; moving from ferocious horror to genuine emotional resonance. A more confident film than the original; Roth takes his time and goes for short, concentrated bursts of terror over the onslaught of pummeling torture of the first 'Hostel'.
'Hostel: Part II' is a more complete experience. Emotions are more invested, as even the most lighthearted scenes have a sense of underlying tragedy. It's clear early; that at least some of the people we like are going to die slowly and painfully in the film.
'Hostel: Part II' has something that most big-budgeted, heavy-handed sequels don't: the ambition to not only repeat it's predecessor, but to expand and improve upon it.