Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with my thoughts on the big opening night flick of Fantastic Fest 2011, Human Centipede II: Full Sequence.
There are many problems with this sequel, but the insurmountable one rests with writer/director Tom Six. Mr. Six really, really thinks he’s important and wants you all to think so, too. I can roll with changing the focus from a more psychological approach (as graphic as the first movie it is, so much of why it works is in how he approaches the horror) to a graphic gorefest. I actually quite like going from the cold, clinical Dr. Heiter to the sweaty, bug-eyed modern day Peter Lorre type and I like that Six is trying to say something with the movie, but what he has to say is insulting to his audience and isn’t even told in a smart way.
Basically the flick follows a creepy parking lot security guard named Martin. This is a tale of obsession as Martin fetishizes the first Human Centipede film to a rather extreme degree. The very premise runs the danger of being masturbatory, insinuating that Six’s cult hit is so important that it has the power to cause psychosis in the disturbed.
As a jumping off point that’s not too bad of a premise, but it becomes real clear real fast that Six is so caught up in his own legend that he ignored making a smart sequel and instead went for an oddly preachy sequel that is everything the harshest critics of the first movie said that one was without the dark humor smarts that made the first one so oddly compelling.
The gore and general fucked-upness were both heightened, but in the cheapest, easiest way possible. How about instead of a 3 person centipede our bad guy wants to make a 12 person centipede! Yeah, that’s the ticket! How about we have a bad guy that is not only unhinged, but also more rapey! Super!
I mentioned that the shock in the movie is cheap and so it is. There is a little thought behind it, but the message of the movie is a big slap in the face to anybody who A) likes horror or B) supported the first Human Centipede and fed Tom Six’s ego in the first place.
Martin (Laurence R. Harvey) is us, or how Mr. Six views us, the audience. We’re apparently all grotesque, filthy, chronic masturbators, obsessed with gore and don’t know the difference between fiction and reality.
What really upsets me about the movie is that there are interesting elements here. Harvey has the making of a great genre icon and turns in a great, non-speaking performance. The glimpses we get as his truly awful family life are darkly humorous in just how horrible it is. Martin lives with his pissed off mother who keeps trying to kill her son. These moments are bright spots and had they been the focus for the character development could have made a fantastic crazy movie.
I was disappointed when that subplot ended shortly after it was introduced, but there came another promising idea… Martin’s not all that intelligent, so when he tries to replicate the first movie’s stark surgical experiment in a dirty, totally non-sterile warehouse… well, it doesn’t go smoothly. Little things he doesn’t think about, like blood loss, suddenly result dead bodies instead of live subjects.
If the movie had focused on either of those subplots instead of basking in its own glory so much then the tone of this review would be much different.
I’m not offended at the subject matter, I’m offended by how easy it is. And cheap. Great, Martin jerks off with strips of sandpaper. Wonderful. Why? Because it’ll make the audience squirm, I guess. And because he was touched as a kid.
The first movie isn’t subtle by any means, but compared to its sequel is The Haunting. There seemed to be at least some attempt at getting under your skin (the scene where Heiter tells his victims what he’s going to do to them), but here Six relies on gore to gross you out. And poop. Lots and lots of poop. He even Schindler’s Lists his feces gags here. I’m not kidding.
Listen, I love a good gore flick, but you can’t pretend to be important, to have something to say and then go right for the easy shock value. If Six wanted to have fun with the sequel he could have, but it feels like his ego got in the way.
More Fantastic Fest reviews on their way, including stuff I actually like! I swear, I’m not the big grumblepuss I probably sound like in the above review.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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