Movie Review: The Human Centipede (2010)

By Cooper Neslon

Up until last night I didn’t think horror movies could get much more disturbing in a slice-a-person-up kind of way than watching the likes of Saw or Hostel... and then I watched The Human Centipede.  As a horror movie goes there isn’t much to it unless you are the type of a person that fears the that-could-actually-happen-to-me type of scenario.  Nothing throughout the movie really makes you jump, and the level of gore that you actually see is only at about a three in my books, but the concept and what the film leaves to the imagination is more than enough to make you sick to your stomach.  In all, the production value is subpar and the acting is only so-so.  The only thing that gives this movie any reason to be watched is if the concept of stitching three people together mouth to anus intrigues you enough to waste a couple hours of your life; otherwise take my advice and don’t pick this movie up.

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The Human Centipede is a gruesome horror movie written and directed by Tom Six.  The main premise of the film is of a deranged German ex-surgeon, Dr. Heiter, whose fame was brought about by separating conjoined twins, and his twisted fantasy of making a conjoined triplet sharing one digestive tract.  Heiter strikes gold when two lost American tourists, Lindsay and Jenny, wind up at his front door without a way out.  Heiter drugs the two girls, and after capturing a Japanese tourist, Katsuro, begins his disturbed experiment by putting the three out one by one.  After drugging Katsuro, Heiter takes an excruciatingly slow amount of time drugging Jenny, allowing Lindsay a chance to chew through her restraints and escape.  After what has to be the worst, most brain-dead attempt at an escape in horror movie history, she is captured and drugged along with the other two prisoners.  After this we now see Heiter’s experiment come to life, with Lindsay In the middle as punishment for her attempt to escape and Katsuro up front with Jenny bringing up the rear, no pun intended.  I won’t reveal the rest, but the movie goes on displaying Dr. Heiter’s cruel mistreatment of his creation and a couple of cops checking out the report of the missing girls, leading to what to me was a pretty predictable ending.

In all I wasn’t too impressed with the film;  it did live up to the hype of being a strange, crude,  slightly intriguing film, but the main attraction of being 100 % medically accurate and of the connected digestive tract is hardly touched.  Also the movie wasn’t good enough to begin with to have a couple of first-time actresses (Jenny and Lindsay) as the main characters.  To me it was more of a sickening movie that I regret picking up then something that I found interesting and would recommend to others to watch.