Can You Point to the Part on the Doll Where Hostel 2 Touched You?

Eli Roth's new movie Hostel: Part II opens today in movie theaters. Some people claim that it's one of the most thrilling horror movies to come out in years, while others contend that it is a sadistic, misogynistic piece of exploitative bullshit. Before you decide where you stand on the issue, consider a few of the scenes that Eli Roth had cut from the film for being too tame:

A woman is strapped to a--

OK, just kidding. I was going to write up some really fucked up scenes of horrible torture, but I didn't really feel like doing that with my brain, because it's gross and sad and horrifying.

There is a scene in Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho in which Patrick Bateman describes attaching electrodes to a woman's breasts and running up the electrical charge until they explode. That is an unsettling word picture to put in your head, but it is just that: a word picture. Moreover, American Psycho had something to say about the vapidity of modern American culture. It delved into gender relations, power structures, voyeurism, economic inequality, and the unbearable pressures capitalism places on one's humanity. I will admit that I have not seen Hostel: Part II, because I consider what remains of my sensitivity to depictions of violence against the human body to be slightly too valuable, but from everything I have read, it seems like it's main intellectual focus is "how bitchin' would it be if you bled a woman to death using a scyth and then someone took a bath in her blood and rubbed the blood on her tits and stuff? TOTALLY BITCHIN!"

Whatever, I'm not a moral crusader or anything. I generally find modern debates over decency, vulgarity, sexuality, media, and cultural representations of sex/violence/race, etc, to be in general ludicrous and ill-conceived. I think that for the most part everyone should be able to choose what they watch, read, hear, and consume. But at the same time, once you see something, you can't unsee it. A child can be taught important lessons about what sex and violence mean to us as human beings. But when you see someone have their head split open with a circular saw because some dude thought it would "look sick" when you're in your late 20's, who do you talk to about how fucked up that is and why it is now stuck in your brain forever?

In summation: Hey, Eli Roth, fuck you, too.

Related: Village Voice Review (Negative)
Sydney Morning Herald Review (Positive)