Remember a few weeks back when I wrote an entire article defending the sub-sub-genre of ‘Torture Porn?’ Remember how I said there was a place for all sorts of films, and I personally enjoyed the challenge of watching a film that tried to make me turn away in horror or disgust with the way it chose to unfold the story? No? Well, just pretend you did so that the next paragraph makes sense.
Apparently there are filmmakers out there who completely forgot that they still need a story when then make a movie (looking at you, Vincent Gallo). It seems that some directors are so wrapped up in trying to prove that they can gross out the audience that they’ve forgotten something very important.
It’s not disturbing if the audience fails to give a shit.
Tom Six is my new poster boy for clueless director who got it all wrong. (Good for you, Vincent Gallo!)
On to the evisceration…errr…review!
Do you recall the ‘hype’ surrounding The Human Centipede? “100% Medically Accurate!” “So disgusting I nearly threw up in the theater!” (I don’t think I got the quote perfectly, but it was attributed to Hostel director Eli Roth. This makes me inexplicably sad.)
It turns out that most of us found THC (hehehe) to be incredibly freaking boring. Medically accurate or not, there just wasn’t any substance to the movie. If you’re going to make a horror movie, you need to either make me really, truly, genuinely give a crap about the main characters, or you have to make it so brutally over-the-top that I can’t help but be amused/disgusted/horrified by your actions.
Good horror movies manage to do both. I can’t be the only person who actually liked the kids in Hostel and was rooting for some of them to get out alive. Surely I’m not the only one who felt at least a little pity for the protagonist of A Serbian Film. Unfortunately, THC gave me three people sewn together that I barely knew and didn’t care about. It also gave me almost no violence or disturbing imagery. Sorry, but three people parading around a backyard wearing diapers isn’t disturbing, it’s silly.
So when I heard that Tom Six was going to sequel his horrible, boring horror film, I actually held out a tiny little bit of hope. I didn’t care if it was going to be a remake, a reworking or a full sequel. I simply wanted Mr. Six to address his critics and try to make a genuinely creepy, disturbing film.
To my chagrin, what we got was 90 minutes of petulance. It’s as if Tom Six threw a temper tantrum, screamed “They think my movie was boring? They didn’t think it was violent enough? Fine, I’ll show them violence! I’ll give them disturbing imagery!” I like to imagine he did it while kicking over Lego’s and jumping up and down like a 3 year old in the midst of a sugar-fueled tantrum.
I’m not going to do anyone in the movie the disservice of mentioning them, because if they’re wise they won’t even put this failure of a film on their resumes. I’m not going to get into details because there’s really nothing that stands out as good or bad. The film goes for shock value and falls flat at every turn. The only thing I liked was the silent antagonist. That was okay. Everything else sucked giant donkey droppings.
Yes, The Human Centipede II has lots of violence and lots of disturbing imagery. Despite all this, I still fails to be over-the-top or truly brutal in any way. It just stays silly. Here’s what THCII has to offer: absolutely no reason to care about anyone in the movie, scenes that luxuriate in their violence to the point where it’s obvious Tom Six is just trying (and failing) to get people to squirm, and an antagonist that is neither fearsome nor pitiable, merely pitiful. I have never been so disappointed in a movie in my life. Even Birdemic has more reasons for recommendations than THCII. At least with Birdemic you get a chance to laugh with your friends.
Yup. I went there. I’m officially on the record as saying that Birdemic is a better movie than The Human Centipede II. Even worse is the fact that Mr. Six is hell-bent on making a trilogy out of it all.
Who the heck is funding this guy???
