Six Entertainment | Buy at Amazon | Review by Casey Criswell
HUMAN CENTIPEDE has so much hype here as of late. It started back when the first disturbing pictures hit the news and it has been building even more since the film has made the festival and indie circuits. The most common report seems to be how disgusting the movie is with a healthy dose of 'disturbing' thrown in there for good measure. Having gotten the chance to take the movie in today, I sat through the full hour-and-thirty-some minutes still waiting for the super-disgusting stuff to kick in, but it never came!
For those of you that haven't heard anything at all about THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE, the setup is pretty simple. Two young American girls are on a trip to Europe. While traveling to find a club in Germany, their car breaks down in front of the house of Dr. Heiter. With their cell phones out of service they opt to head to the house to see if they could call for help. It all seems pure and innocent until they meet Dr. Heiter. Heiter was a world renown surgeon, his specialty being the separation of conjoined twins. In his retirement, he began to have some more ambitious ideas, that of surgically creating a conjoined creature instead of separating. To the misfortune of our two American club girls, they happened across the good doctor after he finalized his theories on creating his demented creature.
I'll be the first to admit; I'm a jaded man. I've seen many many horror films throughout my years, everything from disgusting zombie films and slow burn thrillers. I love them all. So perhaps from the sheer volume of films I've seen in my thirty six years, the ideas of THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE fail to strike me as too disturbing. That's not to say it will affect the average viewer the same way. The concepts at play here are very far out there in left field and for the uninitiated, they could indeed be quite disturbing! As a whole though, we are shown the schematics of Dr. Heiter's plan and we're shown the aftermath. There isn't much in the surgery part that we see which for me, dials down the disturbia. Now, there are moments in the aftermath that do strike even myself as a bit cringe inducing, but director Tom Six shows these moments from a distance and its more the idea of what is going on that will give you shivers as opposed to actually seeing the happenings.
Make no doubt; there is only one big draw to seeing this movie. The human centipede. It is a creature to provide the audience with shock and awe with a pinch of disgust. It can be unsettling. It's well done and at first blush, it's a bit hard to watch. Luckily, there is more to the movie. Many times we see when such a creature is focused upon so highly as the center piece, the rest of the film becomes watered down around it. With the help of Dieter Laser who brings Dr. Heiter to life, the movie manages to stay fairly tense from the moment he steps in front of the camera. Right here, we'll take a brief pause to acknowledge how awesome the name 'Dieter Laser' is. Let it sink in.
Okay, let's continue.
Laser's performance is by far the highlight of the film and for me, is definitely the most disturbing part. Dr. Heiter is a demented man and it is quite apparent just from him answering the door in his very first film. He has a distant empty stare much like Christopher Walken in villain mode and he keeps it up throughout the film. From his every movement you see details of his obsessive nature and his disconnect from the normal world around him. To further this, the character of Dr. Heiter itself is great in that it is a classic mad scientist type role. He has a creepy laboratory, zero regard for humanity and a single minded pursuit for his own goals. He truly is a great character portrayed in a fine manner by Mr. Laser.
Sorry, I had to throw a Mr. Laser in there, how could I not?
The cast for this film is small but beyond our main villain, they all do a decent job. Well, a decent job for actors who spend 75% of the film sewn ass to mouth to their partners. The movie is tense as a whole with little to break it up so it maintains an even balance from beginning to end. It isn't all shock value either. Tom Six makes sure to dedicate a decent amount of time to our character development and even gets in a bit of the classic cat and mouse elements from classic slashers as well.
THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE won't be for everybody. It is a decent film though. If you consider yourself to be like me, well versed in horror cinema, there's not a lot here that is truly going to turn your stomach. For shear tension and deplorableness in plot, such a movie as INSIDE will actually leave you a bit sickened where THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE will leave you with a feeling of wonder, such as 'Wow, they actually did that'. For pure disgusting and vomit's sake, the classic DEAD ALIVE is far harder to watch and far more stomach-churning. Simply put, THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE may not be quite as disgusting as you may have heard.
Go into the film with a healthy expectation and an open mind and you'll have a lot of fun. In todays age of remakes and reboots, it's nice to have something wholly new out there. It's films like this that are decent overall that we need to be sure to support so that we can keep the new blood flowing in the future. Otherwise, we're looking at a wasteland of unwanted sequels and television 'originals'. Nobody wants that.
