The Internet is a pretty big place. It's an untamed frontier whose darkest corners are full of the wildest, weirdest, most shocking and disturbing stuff imaginable. It was this vast digital world where I first heard of a bizarre movie titled The Human Centipede (First Sequence). The movie's premise is simple yet shocking: a mad scientist has kidnapped three tourists and stitched them together ass-to-mouth.
That concept got the movie a lot of attention. The movie was decried as disgusting, repulsive, and obscene, which only led to its writer/director taking the premise to a horrifying new extreme. And because I'm only now realizing that I am a tremendous masochist, I was compelled to watch the sequel, The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence). And I hope you'll believe me when I describe it as one really messed-up movie.
The protagonist of this happy little tale is Martin Lomax (Laurence R. Harvey), a portly British man struggling with serious psychological issues and social inadequacies that can be traced back to his father molesting him during his childhood. Martin maintains an unenviable existence as an adult, facing constant abuse from his domineering mother (Vivien Bridson) and working at a dead-end job as a parking garage attendant. The only thing that gets him through the day is his affection for the first Human Centipede. (Yes, as a matter of fact, The Human Centipede is just a movie in Human Centipede 2.)
When we first meet him, Martin's obsession with The Human Centipede has begun to wholly consume him. He watches the movie on a perpetual loop while at work, and keeps a scrapbook full of images from the movie and paparazzi pictures of its cast. He's even reached the point of becoming sexually aroused by it. But when his mother discovers and angrily destroys the scrapbook, he goes off the deep end. Martin kills his mother and decides to take his obsession to an even more disturbing level by creating his own human centipede.
But Martin doesn't want to settle for a centipede made of just three people like the movie he adores so much. No, his centipede needs twelve people. Martin begins assaulting and kidnapping people from his parking garage late at night, dragging them to an abandoned warehouse to begin his experiment. He even manages to lure one of the actors from the movie, Ashlynn Yennie (playing herself), into his trap after contacting the cast and claiming to be the casting director for Quentin Tarantino's next movie.
However, not only is his centipede not four times as big, it's infinitely more disturbing. Thanks to his lack of both medical experience and the proper surgical implements, Martin's stuck using a staple gun and a few big rolls of duct tape. And as he assembles his centipede, the movie becomes more and more revolting until it finally reaches a crescendo that I would have never believed if I hadn't seen it.
While the concept in and of itself is genuinely gross, the first Human Centipede is actually rather tame if you want to compare it to recent horror movies like the Saw franchise or the Evil Dead remake. Much in the way that Tobe Hooper's original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is perceived as being far more gory and graphic than it actually is, I didn't think that the first Human Centipede was as gross as its reputation may have you believe. (That's not to say that the movie is all lollipops and rainbows, mind you.) And because the rule of "sequel escalation" means that things in a sequel have to be bigger and bolder than its predecessor, I have to assume that when it came time to make Human Centipede 2, writer/director Tom Six said to himself, "You guys think the first movie is nasty? You haven't seen nasty." That's the only thing I can imagine would be going through Six's head when he came up with this movie.
From a production standpoint, Six approaches the sequel differently than he did the first movie. Gone is Dr. Heiter's colorful, glossy, brightly-lit domain. Instead, Six shoots the movie in black and white, in dingy, dark locations. And he puts that monochromatic color scheme to good use, using it in conjunction with the production design, creepy sound design, and stark cinematography to build an oppressive atmosphere meant to make we the audience feel as uncomfortable and repulsed as possible. And that's where Six succeeds.
While he obviously wants to shock us first and foremost, you kinda get the feeling that he wanted to put us in the mind of a truly disturbed individual. The first hour of the movie is genuinely creepy at times, as we're taken deeper into the hell that is Martin's life. He's obviously mentally ill yet everyone in his life abuses him rather than get him any help. His father molested him; his mother is a mean, bitter, callous bitch; and even his psychiatrist is more concerned with being incredibly inappropriate towards him than actually providing any help. Coupled with the fact that Martin is not only obsessed with The Human Centipede but has taken to committing some quite heinous acts inspired by it makes one wonder if Six had any sort of commentary in mind when he was making the movie. Since people are so quick to blame movies and video games and heavy metal music every time some misfit kid goes crazy and takes a machine gun to school, perhaps Six could have been trying to reference a line of dialogue from Scream that told us "movies don't create psychos, they just make them more creative."
But then we hit the last half hour of the movie, where it becomes clear that all that commentary stuff I just mentioned is probably a bunch of crap, and that all Six really wants to do is skewer the reaction to the first movie. Human Centipede 2 is much more violent, brutal, gory, and disgusting than its predecessor. When Martin gleefully dances around his centipede after the high-powered laxatives he's fed them achieve their intended purpose, it almost seems as if one can hear the voice of Six himself narrating the scene, proclaiming that if this what we expected, this is what we'll get. You get the feeling that Six is using the third act of the movie to play a game of one-upmanship with himself, each passing moment providing something even more bothersome than the last. The whole thing becomes an exorcise in pushing the boundaries of good taste, in seeing just how much people will put up with before they get offended and quit watching. It's like an endurance test for the squeamish.
One might also be able to argue that it was an endurance test for the cast as well. Being in that position for any length of time surely couldn't have been too enjoyable. But I applaud them for being such troopers, though, because I wouldn't have been able to do it. However, the actors stuck in the centipede don't really have much to do as far as actually acting goes. No, the lion's share of that goes to Laurence R. Harvey, who is genuinely creepy in the role. He's constantly sweating, his bug-eyed face making it look like his eyes are trying to escape his head. And because he has no dialogue, Harvey communicates through grunts, heavy breathing, the occasional gleeful laugh, and through body language and facial expressions. He makes Martin feel like an absolute creeper, someone who just being around would make your skin crawl. You simultaneously want to pity and fear him, and you'll more than likely be repulsed by him as well.
This is typically the part of the review where I give my final thoughts and wrap things up. But I'm going to break away from my usual routine and use this paragraph to address Tom Six directly. If by some chance you've stumbled upon this review, Mr. Six, thank you for visiting my blog. I've seen both of your Human Centipede movies and after having just finished the second one, I have to say that you have some serious, King Kong-sized balls. The fact that you actually successfully convinced a cast and crew to make this movie, both of these movies, is amazing enough, but wow. You, sir, have to be either out of your mind or one of the bravest filmmakers out there. Maybe both, I don't know.
And as far as giving the movie a rating as usual, I have no idea what the hell to do. The movie is competently made and actually succeeds in the goals I'm sure Six set out to achieve while making the movie (that being to illicit reactions of disgust from the audience). But on the other hand, I don't know whether I can properly call The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) truly good or bad. Maybe I should have followed in the footsteps of Roger Ebert's review of the first movie and refused to give it a rating at the end of this review at all, because I legitimately do not know if there's any sort of fitting grade to assign it. And would it matter? Wouldn't it seem kinda arbitrary?
Oh, and Mr. Six? Considering how utterly disgusting and uncomfortable this movie is, I dread seeing what you'll have waiting for me in Human Centipede 3. If the rumors I've heard about it are true, then I am absolutely terrified to see it.
Final Rating: *** (I guess?)
