The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2010)

Directed By: Tom Six

Starring: Dieter Laser, Ashley C. Williams, Ashlynn Yennie, & Akihiro Kitamura

MPAA Rating: R

My Rating: 1 / 10

There is a very wide range of emotions that I imagine writer and director Tom Six hoped to elicit in audiences watching The Human Centipede (First Sequence). Boredom and disinterest were probably not among them. But, you see, this film is not really a film at all; it is a gimmick painfully stretched out to ninety minutes. How is it stretched out, you ask? By employing every standard horror movie cliche imaginable, that's how. Six knows how to create a morbid centerpiece, but he has no idea about how to implement it in a full-length movie. So, by the time the titular "human centipede" came around, I was so dreadfully bored and unengaged with the narrative that I didn't really care. What should have been a shocking, disturbing concept ended up feeling completely lame and uninspired. And, allow me to blunt for a moment: if you can't make a movie where three people are surgically attached mouth-to-anus style and at least make it interesting, then you have failed...and failed miserably.

There really is no story here; again, everything that happens does so simply to make the Human Centipede exist. Two American tourists...we'll call them Middle and End (Ashley C. Williams and Ashlynn Yennie), though the film needlessly gives them names...are on the way to a party when they blow a tire in the middle of nowhere. And, wouldn't you know it, they have no cell phone service. And, instead of walking back the way they came, they set off through the woods to find help. They arrive at the home of the Mad Scientist (Dieter Laser), who again does, in fact, have a name. But, really, all of these characters are hollow stereotypes anyway, so let's just label them as such for ease of reading. The Mad Scientist says things like, "Are you alone?" and "Come in," in that voice that all Mad Scientists use when luring people to their deaths. And, for no other reason than their own stupidity, the girls go inside his home anyway...and are, none too surprisingly, tied down to hospital beds and forced to watch a slideshow presentation (just in case they were confused) about the Human Centipede project, all before the Mad Scientist begins his macabre procedure.

That first time the Human Centipede walks, it is one of the most unintentionally hilarious moments I've seen all year. The drama builds, the music becomes ominous, Dieter Laser overracts like it's nobody's business, and the Human Centipede climbs to their...his and her...its knees. All the while, I'm stifling laughter. I don't think it's supposed to be funny or, at least, I hope it's not. I mean, it's played with complete seriousness and we know that our characters are probably experiencing the worst fate imaginable, but it's all so hokey and overdone. For these scenes to be effective, we needed to have developed bonds with the characters and we needed to have been emotionally-invested in the story. But, because the characters are stereotypes and the story that got them to this point is so cliched, I was detached and completely unmoved by what I was watching. It doesn't help that the actors all give fairly bad and thoroughly unconvincing performances. Even the much-hyped Dieter Laser feels as though he is just going through the motions, pulling bits and pieces from the other Mad Scientist performances that came before him. They are done no favors by the script, which gives them loads of inane dialog and practically no character development. Fortunately, two of the characters don't talk long...if you get my drift.

Now, for the question I'm sure most of you are wondering: is the Human Centipede as disgusting as it sounds? In theory, yes it is. In execution, not so much. Unfortunately for Tom Six, jaded horror fans have already seen so much gore and torture, that this is not likely to churn their stomachs. Someone who has only a basic familiarity with the horror genre will find it disturbing...but I don't think those will be the people who select The Human Centipede (First Sequence) to watch. While reading a lot of reviews of this film (most of which came from horror-focused websites), I found there to be a lot of defenders of Tom Six and his film. What can I say, it clicked with them and it didn't with me. One called it a "love it or leave it" affair, and I suppose he is right. Some people love it, and highly recommend it. I say all of this, because you deserve to hear more than one side. I hated this movie...no, I loathed this movie. It is, without a doubt, one of the year's worst movies, in my opinion. I found it to be bland, boring, and badly-acted: a one-trick pony that really has no merit. But, others believe that it is one of the year's best. They found some inexplicable charm in it. Even so, when a movie's main plot centers around a person having her mouth surgically-attached to a man's anus and then the same thing happening to her friend, do you really want to risk it?