I noticed Margaret and David failed to review this movie (despite giving the 2005 original 4 stars and reviewing both Hostel I and II), so I’m going to review in detail, and spoiler-free.

The first movie centres around three tourists who are abducted by Mick Taylor and the four of them plus the Aussie outback are the main characters of the film.

The second film centres far more heavily around Mick Taylor rather than the protagonists, and in these regards the film is uneven and even blatantly incorrect in terms of correct story telling narrative at times. This will make much more sense once you’ve seen the film. The outback doesn’t feel as strong a character as from the first movie, and while Mick’s truck returns just as it was in the previous film, his lair is unrecognizable from the first film’s.

The film fails to break new ground. Some of the situations depicted are quite unrealistic, even ridiculous, and moreover there’s just too much screen time for the antagonist this time around. At one point Mick is stalking a vehicle out in the middle of nowhere that is running on empty, that’s just silly and it wasn’t required either. One of the special effects that followed this scene was noticeably low resolution and pixelated! Plus it appears to be exactly the same truck that appears in Wolf Creek 1 at Emu Creek (this may be some kind of “Easter Egg”? For reference this is the scene where Mick’s truck first appears in WC1.) For all Mick’s screen time I would have liked to have seen some actual character development.

One of the sins committed in the story telling, which of course I can’t detail for the sake of spoiling it, centres on how protagonists are treated midway through the film – the first film has a similar, but quite different, manifestation of this error in its story, and it’s sad to say that it’s very easy to spot and any decent scriptwriter or producer should have known better. Suffice to say if you want the audience to care about the character you never do what they did midway through the film. The cinematography left quit a bit to be desired and was not at the same level as the previous film. The sniper scenes in the original film were very well done and memorable and the sniper scenes in this film sadly were not at the same level. In the end I think the story was just too similar to the previous film – it’s meant to be a sequel not a remake!

However despite its shortcomings it is a decent horror movie. It’s not in the same league as Halloween or The Exorcist which are masterfully made films, but it holds up strong against Texas Chainsaw and similar/derivative works (Hostel etc). The film opens strongly, and film ends quite well. Another good point is that it’s lean – 106 minutes which is ideal for horror films like this. This film opened at top box office in Australia beating Lone Survivor. Although not great I would rate it 3 out of 5 stars, with the original film – Wolf Creek 1 rating in at perhaps 3.5 or 4 stars.