Last January, writer/director Eli Roth terrified moviegoers with the blood-drenched HOSTEL, which catapulted to the top of the box office charts and became the first Number One film of 2006. One year later, Roth takes us back to where it all began, and deeper into the darkest recesses of the human mind.
In HOSTEL: PART II, three young Americans travelling in Rome set off for a weekend getaway led by a gorgeous, sophisticated European acquaintance who invites the trio to join her at an exotic natural spa, assuring them they will be able to relax, rejuvenate and bond.
Will the girls find the oasis they are looking for? Or are they poised to become victims for auction, pawns in the fantasies of the sick and privileged from around the world that secretly travel there to savour more grisly pursuits?
With HOSTEL, Eli Roth cemented the cutting-edge credentials he earned with his debut feature CABIN FEVER (2002). In HOSTEL: PART II, Roth invites fans to take another frightening trip where suppressed urges – once unleashed – have chilling consequences.
www.hostel2.co.uk
Q: What can audiences expect from Hostel 2? A: Hostel part two is going to pick up literally the next cut where Hostel one left off. It’s like you could cut out the end credits of Hostel one, head credits of hostel two and it will play as one movie. It will continue with the story of Jay Hernandez, who was the backpacker who was lured to this place where business men are paying to kill and torture people Were gonna following his storyline. Were also gonna follow three Americans girls, their studying in Italy and they get drawn into the hostel. We’ll see how they lure girls there and what happens to them and were also going to follow the storyline of the clients: the business men that have paid and signed up to kill these girls. So were going to be paralleling all three different stories so they all meet in this one horrible place.
Q: What was your Inspiration for Hostel?
A: Well hostel one came from this website that I saw that Harry Knowles on the website Ain’t It Cool showed me that advertised a place in Thailand where for 10,000 dollars you can walk into a room and shoot someone in the head. And it said that the person you were shooting had signed up so you could know what it feels like to kill somebody and that part of the money would go to the victim’s family. And we said, is this real? I mean there’s no way that a place like this exists, even in an underground kind of way. And then we thought, you know what? It doesn’t matter if it’s real or not, somebody still conceptualized this and made this webpage about it. The thought that someone else had thought of it was enough. I thought you know what? If someone else has thought of this I think someone is doing it. So that’s what inspired me to write the story of hostel. And I never planned on doing a sequel. Most Hollywood movies are made for 80 million dollars and we made hostel for 3.8 million. So it was this kind of one off movie and I said lets just make it ultra violent in the ways that Asian directors Takashi Miike made Audition and Chan McParker did Sympathy for Mr.Vengence and Old Boy, let’s do that style of movie. And then the film knocked Narnia out of the box office and you go oh my god, this is much more main stream and widespread than any of us ever of believed. We couldn’t believe it so, I thought you know what? I want to continue this. I want to go deeper into the story line and I think I can make better movie. In fact, I got to watch it with audiences around the world and see where people were on the edge of their seats and where they were bored and I’m gonna take the best parts of the first one and use that as the building blocks for the sequel. I really set out to make a better, smarter, scarier film.
Q: Does it excite you or is there more pressure on you?
A: Well, nobody puts more pressure on me than I put on myself, but hostel part two was the first time I was working under the microscope. But I knew I was on the right track when I turned the script in, I showed the studio, I said this is the movie I’m making. They said, “you can’t do this, this is too sick.” And that’s the same response I got on Cabin Fever, the same response I got on Hostel. And I said, ok well if something’s not working story wise tell me, but for you to say this is too horrible, no one would see this, this is too sick, then I know I’m on the right path, and I went ahead and made it. And I’m really really proud of it. For me the goal was to make a movie like Aliens or Road warrior. Not in terms of making an action movie, but in terms of when I saw those films I came out of the theatre and I went oh my god that was so much better than the first one. And then I look at how Quentin did Kill Bill 1 and Kill Bill volume 2 and their both brilliant movies and they coexist and that’s what I wanted here. I said I’m not just gonna make some sequel, I’m continue the story and really make a better, smarter scarier film. I think the ending will be shocking and people will come out of this movie and go oh my god I cannot believe someone did that in a movie. Its gotta have those sequences, but when were not in a violent sequence, I want it to be tense, and scary and creepy, and ominous. Those are the parts that I thought really, really worked best in Hostel 1, not like the funny stuff in the beginning. It’s not a tonal shift now. We’re starting off in that dark place, and it’s only going to get darker.
Q: Do you want people to react like “Oh my God!”?
A: Oh I want people to come out and go that was the most fun I’ve ever had in a horror film. You know I don’t want people to feel like their sick and punched in the stomach, but I want people to feel like they just got off and survived the scariest rollercoaster ride they’ve ever been on in their life. And sometimes it’s not like movie scary, its gonna be disturbing and creepy, its different types of scares. But I want people to coming out of the theatre going “you cannot believe what they did in this movie. You thought the first one was crazy, like you cannot believe the scenes they saw.” But I want people to leave excited and pumped and feeling like, shaking.
Q: Quentin Tarantino – how did the relationship start?
A: I met Quentin Tarantino on Cabin Fever. He came to see the film and loved it and we became friends and watch movie and hang out. He actually cast me in his movie Death Proof. I actually took time out of my pre-production of hostel part two to fly to Texas to act in Quentin’s movie which was crazy. I was like, Quentin I’m not an actor, and he’s like “No man, you gotta do it, you gotta do it!” and he’s so fun and so encouraging that I was thought Jesus this is a master class in directing and I get to watch Quentin Tarantino on set. I really got to incorporate some of his things into my own directing. I felt like we had very similar styles and approaches. I mean obviously not stylistically the end result, but the way we deal with people and how we talk to the crew and our personalities are very similar in that way. It was just an amazing, amazing opportunity for me. After Hostel part two, for two days I shot the trailer for Grindhouse, which I believe is going to come out in the UK on Planet Terror, this thing called Thanksgiving. It was so much fun, it was the most fun I’ve ever had shooting anything. It was amazing experience to be part of Tarantino-Rodriguez project like that. Quentin is so great and so supportive and really was the one who encouraged me and pushed me to make Hostel when I was not sure if I was going to take a studio movie or do another low budget independent movie. Even when I told him about the idea for Hostel 2, he’s like “that’s great, I want to learn about that factory and the minutia, and how it works” And I said yea I’ve got it all figured out, here’s the story line and he’s like “Go for it!”
Q: Will there be a Hostel 3?
A: No, there will not be a Hostel 3. I mean I guess never say never but there will not be a Hostel 3 that I'm going to drag, certainly not at this point. I really feel like, I look at Kill Bill 1 and Kill Bill 2 and House of a Thousand Corpses and Devil’s Rejects, and I just wanted to go out and make a great, great, great sequel that blows away the first one. If someday I felt like I had a really inspired idea for Hostel 3, I would only make it if I felt it could blow away the first and the second one.
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