Film: The Human Centipede
Over that past decade, a new genre of film ‘Torture Porn’ has become prominent to mainstream audiences thanks to the like of films like ‘Saw’. Although explicitly violent torture films aren’t anything particularly new to the industry, they were always considered the bastard child of cinema. Then in 2009 along comes Dutch director Tom Six with ‘The Human Centipede’, which totally breaks down the genre modern audiences consider ‘Torture Porn’.
‘The Human Centipede’ follows the story of two American tourists Lindsay and Jenny as they make their way across Germany as part of a road trip. Like any cliched horror film before it, their rental car breaks down in near some isolated villa in the middle of the night. In dire search of help (due to no cellphone coverage), the two girls make their way through the forest until they stumble across the house of Dr. Heiter, a world renowned (recently retired) surgeon in the field of Siamese separation. Although unfortunately for the two tourists, he now specializes in surgically conjoining humans via the gastric system. Which he appropriately named, The Human Centipede.
It’s hard from a creative standpoint to slander the concept of the film too much, because undoubtedly Six’s idea was original and somewhat compelling if you are inclined to extreme cinema. But Six let’s the story fall to the wayside, never being fully realized in favour of the concept of the operation itself. This is made evident by Six’s research in which he consults a local surgeon to confirm if the operation itself is surgically possible. This resulted in the films tag line “100% Medically Accurate”. But you can’t expect to much from a film called ‘The Human Centipede’, it’s not as if their target demographic are watching it for three dimensional characters or a truly touching story.
The performance of the actors in the film were extremely varied, the acting of the two female tourists is so terrible it’s borderline comical. Although I’m not sure if that was Six’s intent, but it definitely contributes to the layer of humour throughout the film. Undeniably the performance of the surgeon, played by Dieter Laser steals the show. He plays the character so convincingly that it’s almost hard to believe that the character doesn’t exist.
Although the performances are inconsistent, the production values are constantly superb. From the art direction right through to the realistic work from the makeup department, everything is pulled off convincingly to correctly immerse you into Six’s strange and bizarre world.
It’s fair to say that ‘The Human Centipede’ isn’t a fantastic horror film and by itself, I wouldn’t really recommend Six’s creation if you are disgusted at it’s core concept. But there is one extremely notable aspect about this film, it is simply a brilliant cinematic experience! There were moments in the cinema where the whole audience started to roar in applause at some of the films most iconic moments. Watching this film by yourself would be doing both you and the film a great disservice. Much like the human centipede itself, it was designed to be a shared experience.
(via critiqued)
I reviewed ‘The Human Centipede’ for University.
What of it?!
