Hotel Inferno 2: The Cathedral of Pain

Dark, ultra gory, unsettling, and not funny. Don't know why people compare this to a video game, to me this is more a fpv Fulci's movie. Italian gore at its best, highly recommended.

Necrostorm's sequel to their enjoyable first person POV gorefest Hotel Inferno features bucket-loads of impressive splatter effects (and some less effective monsters) but proves extremely tedious thanks to a silly storyline that plays out like a very bad video game, repeating the same thing over and over again: central character Frank Zimosa (voiced by Rayner Bourton) wanders through Hell, performing incomprehensible tasks that bring him up against a series of infernal creatures who he proceeds to beat or shoot into a bloody mess. Frank is aided in his by quest by an annoying witch (voiced by Roland Stone) who talks like one of Jim Henson's creations from Labyrinth. Sounds like fun but there really isn't much more to this than kill, repeat.

Frank's catchphrase "I'm so ****ing tired of this ****!" sums up how I feel about the movie as a whole. However, I get the feeling that I must be in the minority: Hotel Inferno 3: The Castle of Screams is filming as I type, and IMDb has 'in production' pages for parts 4, 5 and 6.

I loved hotel inferno1, and I double loved hotel inferno2 . I can sum this movie like a Doom, DarkSouls, Cannibal Corpse smoothie. The story is simple like in a videogame: Frank is in Hell and he must find some kind of emblems to resurrect himself, and to do that he has to kill small and huge demons. The setting is astonishing, like you are inside a Cannibal Corpse's cover, and the movie is full of awesome practicals, videogames references ad cheesy dialogues, all covered with tons of awesome gore. My only complains, the infant scene, I really hate to see violence on babies, even if they are monsters. Already backed chapter 3 and I can't wait to see it, literally.

Greeting from Germany

I thoroughly enjoyed the Italian film Hotel Inferno (2013), it was a well made highly original horror effort and upon learning it was becoming a franchise I was fairly excited.

Foolishly they waited too long, it took a whole four years before the second part came out and I can confidently say that it's a bust and does not come close to the quality or novelty appeal of the first.

We see Franks story continue, he's now dead after the events of the first film and finds himself in hell. Upon escaping his chains he makes an ally and goes about finding a way back to his body in the land of the living.

Solid enough idea and once again the practical effects are top notch (If you can stomach them) but the story is an absolute mess and never quite finds its feet.

For those unaware of the first movie it's all filmed through the characters eyes, so found footage but less silly. It's hyper gory, on levels you may never have seen before. It even gives Brain Dead/Dead Alive (1992) a run for its money. This is really hardcore stuff and for that reason certainly niche, people might also struggle to make it through the level of profanity. How can swearing be hard to cope with you ask? Watch it and find out, it's very annoying.

I had high hopes for this franchise as the first movie was fantastic, but if this is it's future then I'd say wrap it all up with one final movie and be done with it. I'd say don't bother with the third movie, but Cathedral of Pain hardly resolves anything.

Wasted potential, such a shame.

The Good:

Incredible gory practical effects

Decent soundtrack

The Bad:

Voice work is still hokey as hell (Pun intended)

Weak script

Not for the squeamish

Oddly boring in places

Some stupid inconsistencies

For certain Hotel Inferno 2: The Cathedral of Pain is no movie for the mainstream horror audience. It's kinda Hellraiser (the parts playing in hell's domain) on steroids, or, what Rob Zombie does not dare to show to us ;)

I like this movie simply for one main reason - its visuals (the gore, the settings, the demons), and the soundtrack and the last "level" remind me here and there tenderly of the Doom game series, which I played uncounted hours in my younger years (so my judgement on this one may be seriously clouded).

Conclusion: you must like the unusual to like this movie (including the egoshooter-perspective of the cam), that's for sure, and you must like gore and splatter, lots of - and by the way, some masks and gore effects are just too adorable. If you vote this gem down, go watch your teenage horror slashers ;)