Human Centipede: a Review in 3 Segments

If you haven’t heard about Human Centipede, you’re in for a shock/surprise/treat.  Human Centipede is the story of Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser), a prominent German surgeon–a conjoined-twin specialist–who dreams of creating a “human centipede” by surgically attaching 3 people via the digestive track.  And if that sounds like something stomach-churningly disturbing, it is.

First Segment: The Front

It is my belief that any film–no matter how base a form of entertainment it may be–operates under a certain philosophy, an underlying theme which runs like a spine through the story-arc of the work.  It is also my belief (and understanding) that a film exists to communicate a message to it’s audience.  Most of the time, this message is a hokey altruism or platitude like “love conquers all” or “suffering is universal,” but no matter how basic the point, the point is inevitable there…which is why Human Centipede is both fascinating and perplexing to me.

Human Centipede is a film made on a very low budget, which means that it is a work of passion.  It is an idea that the director (Tom Six) believes is important enough to be made with very little funding and a lot of tender-loving-care.  Independent films differ from major studio productions in that they can’t get lost among the bustle of t00-many-forks-in-one-pie syndrome.  There’s no way for an independent film to become a glaring advertisement for Gillette or cut down to the point that it’s unwatchable.  An independent film is pretty much exactly what the director intended (maybe without the special effects afforded to major studio productions), but it is an accurate example of the director’s vision, which leaves the question: what possible reason could Tom Six have for making this movie?

Second Segment: The Middle (SPOILER ALERT!)

The movie itself plays out like a weird hybrid between a Japanese horror film and a very dark comedy.  The first 20 minutes are Troma-esque in their terrible acting and filthy sense of humor, but then we make our way to something much more unsettling.

Ashley and Ashlynn are two American tourists whose rental car breaks down in the German wilderness.  In order to escape a downpour of rain, they stop at the home of Dr. Heiter and ask for help.  Heiter is unabashedly inhuman, and after drugging them both, he locks them in his cellar with the plans of creating his masterpiece.  What follows is a lot of surprisingly tactful shots of what is basically the most unsettling concept in the history of film (and I’ve seen (parts of) Salo).  By surgically connecting Ashley and Ashlynn to a Japanese tourist named Akihiro, Heiter creates his masterpiece, which he genuinely seems to love in the same way someone would love a 3-legged dog.  When cops show up to investigate the missing tourists, Ashley, Ashlynn, and Akihiro have to work together in an attempt to escape.

Third Segment: The Back

Human Centipede is surprisingly well-shot.  Some of the scenes are almost elegant, and the strange sense of humor is almost charming.  By the final act, I found myself both cringing in horror and rooting for the centipede’s great escape.  The truth of human suffering is definitely present (and exemplified by the relationship between Ashley and Ashlynn), but the movie suffers from a serious lack of thematic continuity.  We get the sense of  a weird god/creation dynamic that Akihiro points out in a monologue aimed at adding depth to the thematically lacking film, but unfortunately, it’s too little, too late, and as the camera pulls away from the scene of the horrors, we can’t really believe that we saw anything truly worthwhile.  Maybe in Tom Six’s sequel, Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) (2011), we will see something with a little more focus, but with such disturbing subject matter, will he find an audience willing to sit through this again?