Rating summary
Movie | | 1.5 |
Video | | 2.5 |
Audio | | 4.0 |
Extras | | 3.0 |
Overall | | 1.5 |
The Human Centipede 2 [Full Sequence] Blu-ray Movie Review
Happy Valentine's Day
Reviewed by Casey Broadwater February 13, 2012
Dutch horror filmmaker Tom Six is fond of pointing out in interviews that his debut feature, 2010's The Human Centipede
(First Sequence), has gotten a reputation as "the sickest film ever made." It does indeed have a gag reflex-triggering
premise--a crazed German doctor sews three people together, mouth to anus--but sickest film ever? I think not. The
Human Centipede wasn't even the most depraved movie of 2010. That dubious honor should go to the truly revolting
A Serbian Film, which grimly portrays necrophilia and--in one particularly horrific turn--the rape-to-death of a
newborn child. (I don't blame you if you flat out stop reading this review after that sentence. It's a gross understatement to
say these sorts of films aren't for everyone.) With ante-upping in mind, Six quickly promised that his in-the-works sequel,
Full Sequence, would make the first Human Centipede look like "My Little Pony." Mission accomplished? Sure,
but so what? While part two is darker, filthier, and more revolting by far, it soon reaches a point of diminishing shock value
returns, a point where extremity for the sake of debauched, dehumanizing extremity becomes dull. It's like that episode of
Southpark where Matt Stone and Trey Parker had their characters say "shit" every few seconds; after a while, it
completely loses its potency.
Martin
For
Full Sequence, Six has forgone the usual horror sequel storyline--the killer strikes again!--and instead ventures
into look-how-clever-I-am meta-movie territory. He opens with the final shot of the first film, but when the credits roll, the
camera pulls back to reveal that the movie is being watched on a laptop by Martin Lomax (Laurence R. Harvey), a gnomish
night security guard at an almost entirely abandoned underground parking garage somewhere in England. Short, sweaty, and
with a face so bug-eyed and squashed it makes Peter Lorre look like Ryan Gosling in comparison, Martin is one of the most
unfortunate-looking screen villains since, well,
Human Centipede's evil, uber-Teutonic Dr. Heiter, played by Dieter
Laser. If Six is good at one thing, it's casting iconically ugly and genuinely terrifying baddies.
It's implied that Martin is developmentally retarded, and we also come to learn he was sexually and emotionally abused as a
child, a thinly-sketched backstory meant to explain his fanatical obsession with Dr. Heiter's ass-to-mouth medical
experiments. At home, where he lives with his pet centipede and crazed, overbearing mother (Vivien Bridson), he keeps a
scrapbook devoted to the
First Sequence under his mattress, like a porn mag he doesn't want anyone to find. Six
makes the sexual subtext even more explicit--
incredibly explicit--when he shows Martin violently masturbating with a
strip of sandpaper while watching the film's infamous poop-swallowing scene. Still with me? Like I said before; don't be
ashamed to bow out of this one early. There's no dishonor in
not wanting to watch a guy mutilate his junk with a
sheet of 80-grit.
We never once hear Martin speak during the film--Harvey's performance is built out of maniacal grunts and giggles and
screams--but his mother mentions to his impressively bearded psychologist (Bill Hutchens) that her Faulknerian idiot son has
been babbling on about a "twelve-person centipede." She doesn't know what that means, but we do. And we know what's
coming. Targeting the late-night patrons of the parking garage--whom he beats over the head with a crowbar--Martin
amasses his victims, taking them bound and gagged to a grungy, out-of-the-way warehouse where he can work undisturbed.
In what can only be described as a casting coup, he also manages to lure the lead actress of the first film into the warehouse-
-Ashlynn Yennie, playing herself--by convincing her manager that she'll be auditioning for a new Quentin Tarantino film. You
think I'm kidding, but I'm not.
Once the "links" in Martin's centipede-to-be are gathered together--it takes about an hour for the film to get here--the
next thirty minutes are a non-stop onslaught of violence and debasement. Teeth are chipped out with a hammer. Knee
tendons are severed. A tongue is ripped out with a rusty pair of pliers. Martin doesn't have the surgical know-how of Dr.
Heiter, so he simply staples his victim, ass to face, forming one long digestive tract. Surprise, surprise! For his next barbarity
he injects them all with a laxative! I'll spare you the fetid description of what happens afterward, except to say that the
noticeably brown feces in the otherwise monochromatic film is--according to Six's audio commentary--a half-smirking homage
to Spielberg's sparse use of color in the black and white
Schindler's List. So, yeah, classy stuff. Did I mention that a
baby gets its skull crushed under the gas peddle of a car? Or that Martin rapes the tail-end of the "centipede" with his penis
wrapped in barbed wire?
Obviously, there
can be value in pushing the boundaries of taste to test just how elastic they are--John Waters, for
instance, made a career out of this--but without much real substance, Tom Six's movies are stretched awfully thin.
Full
Sequence hints at the influence of much better films--like David Lynch's
Eraserhead and Pier Paolo Pasolini's
Salò--films that are disturbing but also emotionally layered and intellectually stimulating. There's no such complexity
here; Six's approach is blunter than the tools Martin uses to torture the individual legs of his human centipede.
Yesterday, I stumbled across the decidedly NSFW website devoted to Six's artwork,
paintfartsbytomsix.com, and in his crude,
simplistic paintings--with adolescent titles like
Worms in Stool,
Used Tampon, and
Sperm Lunch--you
get a boiled-down version of his filmmaking aesthetic. He's out to shock, (im)pure and simple, presenting the vile in all its
explicit disgustingness and challenging us to stare at it straight-on. That would be all well and good as a thematic starting
point, but Six doesn't take it any further. Sure, you can easily read into what his gross-out art might
mean in a broad
sense--as a reaction to social norms, a reflection on increased desensitization due to the influence of the internet, a response
to his critics,
whatever--but that would be
your creative act and not his. After reading several interviews with
Six, I honestly don't think he's put that much thought into it. And he doesn't need to for literal shit like this. Being offensive is
far easier than being profound.
The Human Centipede 2 [Full Sequence] Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality
The first Human Centipede had a surprisingly bright, almost sterile aesthetic--which fits well with Dr. Heiter's surgical
background--but the sequel takes the complete opposite approach to mirror the squalor of Martin's existence. It's dark, dingy,
and handheld, shot digitally in color and then converted in post to a punchy black and white. IFC's 1080p/AVC-encoded Blu-ray
presentation does the best that it can with the source material, which has some of the problems you normally associate with
low-budget shot-on-video productions. The biggest offender is that there's aliasing all over this film. Seriously, you'll
notice jaggies in just about every scene. Anytime there are close parallel lines in the shot--the grill of a car, the frames of
Martin's glasses, the walls of the warehouse--you'll notice a wavering stair-step effect. A similar moire pattern shows up often
in some of the characters' clothing. It's unavoidably distracting. The density of the black and white color grading is also
somewhat inconsistent. Some sequences have a very "pushed" high contrast look, comprised mostly of blacks and whites,
while others have a muddled grayish appearance. (Oh, and look out for the really obvious digitally-inserted rain.) As for clarity,
it's mixed too. There are shots that are fantastically sharp and detailed, and others that look soft and muddled. The film's Blu-
ray producers probably didn't have much to do with any of this--I chalk up any deficiencies to the way the film was shot--but
be aware that this isn't exactly a pristine high definition experience.
The Human Centipede 2 [Full Sequence] Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality
I have no qualms, though, with the film's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track, which is clean and dynamically solid and
appropriately gruesome. The first film only had a stereo mix, but Full Sequence's 5.1 sound design means the grisly
sounds of torture can come at you from all directions. And they often do. Most of the last third of the film consists of muffled,
face-buried-in-buttocks screaming, potent gun shots, diarrhetic gurgles, and other similarly horrific noises, and you can tell the
foley artists had fun with this one. (There's a brief featurette in the bonus features that shows the sound designers at work.)
There's no score, per se, but there is a sort of unsettling ambient drone that fills in most scenes. Dialogue--what little of it
there is--is always clear and easily understood. The disc includes optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles.
The Human Centipede 2 [Full Sequence] Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras
- Audio Commentary: Tom Six and actor Laurence Harvey sit down for a self-congratulatory chat about the
making of the film. Six's self-aggrandizing will quickly get on your nerves.
- Interview with Filmmaker Tom Six (SD, 12:35): Likewise, Six fields a few questions about the casting process,
the film's controversial nature, and his motto on life.
- Set Tour of Warehouse (SD, 9:17): Actress Ashlynn Yennie gives us a guided tour of the film's set.
- Foley Sound Effects (SD, 3:07): Not kosher. Inside the sound studio we watch a foley artist stabbing a ham
shank to score the the film's rape scene.
- Making the Poster (1080p, 2:18): A behind-the-scenes look at the poster photo shoot.
- Deleted Scene (SD, 00:25)A short clip of Martin barking at a dog.
- Promo (SD, 2:10)
- Trailer (1080p, 2:07)
- Teaser (SD, 00:53)
The Human Centipede 2 [Full Sequence] Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation
More gore? Yes. More feces-eating? Sure. More depraved sex? Absolutely. If that's all you're after, The Human Centipede
II delivers. But that's all it delivers. In director Tom Six's films, people are reduced to fleshy bags of blood and shit--to put
it as bluntly as he does--and as true as that may be on some fundamental level, his shock-auteur approach is too dim-witted to
be of much interest. Torture-pornoholics may get a brief thrill out how sick Full Sequence is, but more mainstream
horror fans are advised to proceed with caution. I just don't see what the fuss is all about.