rmawatson Reviews

Hostel: Part II (2007)

More of the same..

[4/10 · 29 May 2007]

For me, someone who thought the first installment of hostel was great, I had to check out the second.

I consider myself a fairly strong-stomached moviegoer, but I'm not ashamed to say this movie had me squirming in my seat.. Yet again! I would be hard pushed to argue this movie is anything but an excuse to once again try and push the boundaries of explicit violence and depravity, something that seems to be a bit of a trend these days. The narrative is fairly primitive, and in many aspects it is a replica of the first. American backpackers lured to a hostel in Slovakia where they are kidnapped and sold to the highest bidder to be tortured and killed. Only its girls this time.

However this movie does take the viewer a little further behind the scenes of the 'business', and follows two rich 'clients' through the process of purchasing a subject right through to the torture chamber sequences. Something that was quite interesting if you enjoyed the first film.

The first film I found fairly believable, and could actually imagine such a place in some remote part of Europe - which is party what added to my enjoyment of it. This installment not quite as well thought out and I did find the twist at the end totally impossible to accept. The shrouded secrecy of the business 'Elite Hunting' that was prevalent in the first film seemed to be totally thrown out of the window.

But If you want to see more of the same you will enjoy this film - its great for what it is, but don't expect anything original!

Primeval (2007)

Mother F****rs!!!!

[1/10 · 25 May 2007]

This film had the single most misleading trailer I have ever seen. The movie itself is 100% predictable, tedious, and Already Done. We've seen the giant crocodile in Lake Placid, which was actually pulled off a lot better. You barely get to see much more than a heavily motion blurred set of teeth and they sweep past the camera. Those shots that you do see more of the crocodile are poor by todays standards in terms of CG, at best. No wonder they didn't include them in the trailer! I am sure that the reason for the trailer being as misleading as it was, was to conceal the bad CGI, and duplicate theme! The performances from all the 3 main cast members were wooden, which can quite probably be blamed on a frankly dire script.

Same old, Same Old, Same Old..Don't waste your time, effort or money on this rubbish.

Open Water 2: Adrift (2006)

A Huge pile of Horse Excrement

[1/10 · 25 October 2006]

6 people end up out of their yacht without a way to climb back on.. yep.. 6 people. To anyone with the slightest practical skill, this would involve 30 seconds of laughing about your stupidity and about 2 minutes of getting back onto the boat. This film drags out some of the most feeble attempts to rescue themselves you can possibly imagine the first 20 minutes of attempts consists of jumping and trying to grab the lip of the boat Not once, not twice, but at least 15 times. It didn't work the first time guys! The obvious solution for anyone would be for 2-3 of your fellow shipmates to throw you up out the water. Problem solved. It annoyed me severely waiting for someone to think of this, which never happened.

The next attempt, another 10 minutes later, involved making a rope from everyones clothes. Again, how f**cking long does it take to think of such simple solutions!! This attempt of course failed with the 'rope' ripping, the guy of course, got high enuf to grab the slippery lip of the boat, with an easily reachable handy metal bar right beside him.. which, he of course didn't grab.

At this point the film goes from bad to worse (if thats possible). one guy for some reason swims right into the boat and cracks his head open. another randomly stabs himself, someone else swims off and starts to drown.. they've only been in the water for 40 minutes.. I've had baths longer than that! At this point I had to walk out of this movie, for one reason. Each one of them deserved to drown at sea, and unfortunately, I knew that whichever one it was, one of them would be making it home.

Save yourself the effort.