Gross-out one-upmanship is a time-honored horror-movie tradition, so in a way Tom Six's much talked-about ick-fest The Human Centipede (First Sequence) was probably inevitable. That's not to say that a movie about a human centipede was bound to be made, but that the extremes of nastiness that Six indulges in were going to be reached eventually.
Really, though, Six's movie could be a lot grosser. He accomplishes plenty via implication, although he's not afraid to show the complete range of effects borne out by his disturbing premise. And what exactly is a human centipede, you may wonder? Be warned, because you can't unlearn this: It's a surgical hybrid created by the movie's villain, Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser), in which three people are sewn together, mouth to anus, in sequence. (Their ligaments are cut at the knees, also, so they can't stand up.) Why does Heiter want to create a human centipede? Does it really matter? He isn't motivated by revenge or a sense of moral righteousness, just a desire to try the most messed-up thing he possibly can. After a career as a surgeon separating conjoined twins, Heiter now wants to do some conjoining.
So he abducts a couple of clueless American tourists, Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams) and Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie), whose car breaks down on a remote German road, and takes them to his makeshift surgical suite, where he gives a gleeful presentation via overhead projector about the whole human centipede process, complete with cute, rudimentary drawings. Scenes like that bring out a bit of campy humor in Six's over-the-top premise, but for the most part the movie is grim and serious, although it's sometimes hard to tell what exactly it's serious about.
Eli Roth's Hostel movies may have been depraved and disgusting, but they at least had something to say, in their own sick manner. Six is like a giddy toddler who just discovered the word "poop" and is determined to use it as much as possible. His premise is so gross and off-putting that its mere existence is enough to induce discomfort, and Six admittedly does a good job in ratcheting up that feeling without being overly explicit. When the centipede's front section, a Japanese tourist named Katsuro (Akihiro Kitamura), announces apologetically that he's about to have a bowel movement, the look on Lindsay's face and the sound effects are more than enough to get the point across. Six may come close to the line between horror movie and fetish porn, but he never actually crosses it.
And its central gimmick aside, Centipede turns out to be a conventional horror movie in a lot of ways. There are the dumb party girls ignorant of what they're about to face. The car breaking down in the middle of the woods. The escape fake-out. The cops who come this close to discovering the whole thing. Even the villain is a bit of Jigsaw, a bit of Hannibal Lecter. Laser, a veteran character actor in Germany, clearly relishes the part, and he makes Heiter's every line into a sadistic pronouncement dripping with venom. "You're the middle!" he exuberantly tells Lindsay when he catches her trying to run away, and the disturbing ramifications of that statement are all too easy to imagine.
There just isn't enough of that cleverness or absurdity to the movie, though; it needed more of Heiter's silly sentimentality when reminiscing about his first experiment, the "3-dog," and less of Katsuro's climactic speech about the meaninglessness of life. Without a sense of humor or a sense of purpose, all The Human Centipede ultimately ends up with is empty shock value.
Really, though, Six's movie could be a lot grosser. He accomplishes plenty via implication, although he's not afraid to show the complete range of effects borne out by his disturbing premise. And what exactly is a human centipede, you may wonder? Be warned, because you can't unlearn this: It's a surgical hybrid created by the movie's villain, Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser), in which three people are sewn together, mouth to anus, in sequence. (Their ligaments are cut at the knees, also, so they can't stand up.) Why does Heiter want to create a human centipede? Does it really matter? He isn't motivated by revenge or a sense of moral righteousness, just a desire to try the most messed-up thing he possibly can. After a career as a surgeon separating conjoined twins, Heiter now wants to do some conjoining.
So he abducts a couple of clueless American tourists, Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams) and Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie), whose car breaks down on a remote German road, and takes them to his makeshift surgical suite, where he gives a gleeful presentation via overhead projector about the whole human centipede process, complete with cute, rudimentary drawings. Scenes like that bring out a bit of campy humor in Six's over-the-top premise, but for the most part the movie is grim and serious, although it's sometimes hard to tell what exactly it's serious about.
Eli Roth's Hostel movies may have been depraved and disgusting, but they at least had something to say, in their own sick manner. Six is like a giddy toddler who just discovered the word "poop" and is determined to use it as much as possible. His premise is so gross and off-putting that its mere existence is enough to induce discomfort, and Six admittedly does a good job in ratcheting up that feeling without being overly explicit. When the centipede's front section, a Japanese tourist named Katsuro (Akihiro Kitamura), announces apologetically that he's about to have a bowel movement, the look on Lindsay's face and the sound effects are more than enough to get the point across. Six may come close to the line between horror movie and fetish porn, but he never actually crosses it.
And its central gimmick aside, Centipede turns out to be a conventional horror movie in a lot of ways. There are the dumb party girls ignorant of what they're about to face. The car breaking down in the middle of the woods. The escape fake-out. The cops who come this close to discovering the whole thing. Even the villain is a bit of Jigsaw, a bit of Hannibal Lecter. Laser, a veteran character actor in Germany, clearly relishes the part, and he makes Heiter's every line into a sadistic pronouncement dripping with venom. "You're the middle!" he exuberantly tells Lindsay when he catches her trying to run away, and the disturbing ramifications of that statement are all too easy to imagine.
There just isn't enough of that cleverness or absurdity to the movie, though; it needed more of Heiter's silly sentimentality when reminiscing about his first experiment, the "3-dog," and less of Katsuro's climactic speech about the meaninglessness of life. Without a sense of humor or a sense of purpose, all The Human Centipede ultimately ends up with is empty shock value.
