The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009)

Director:

Tom Six

Writer:

Tom Six

                The Human Centipede, the very title grabs your attention. As a two horror lovers we are always on a search for a fresh and original horror movies. We stumbled across this move a while ago, but never actually wanted to see it because we somehow tought that it was not worth watchig. It was too hard to believe that idea like this could be successfuly translated into a good movie. Even our friends who watched it told us that it was unwatchable. Since the two of us are known for watching the groosomest of the groosome movies we just couldn't betray our "good" reputation by not watching this one. We must commend the title of the movie because we realized that we have been talking about it for at least a couple of months without even watching it.

                Plot story: This is one of the bizzarest plot stories we had to write. The main character is a renowed doctor Heiter who is a retired specialist in the field of separating Siamese twins. His goal is to create a new pet for himself, and in doing so, he will use the two american girls who accidentaly stumbled across his house in a search for help and a japanese man whom he kidnapped.

                This Dutch movie was awarded for the Best Horror Feature film and the Best Actor (Dieter Laser) on the Fantastic Fest film festival that takes place on South Lamar in Austin, Texas, USA.

No wonder that the Best Actor award was given to Dieter Laser because he put on an amazing performance. His embodiment of the mad scientist can easily be put in the hall of fame of the movie mad scientists of all time (Dr. Frankestein, Dr. Brown, Dr. Strangelove,  Dr. Mabuse ...). He has a perfect physical appearance of one (the white medical robe, the facial features, his eyes and his accent). We know that it's a cliche, but he would have been the perfect nazi mad scientist (I think that, because of his looks, he has to wear a jew friendly sign on him all of the time just in case :) ). The very focus of the movie is on Dr. Heiter and his experiment. People being used for the experiment are less importnant since we don't know anything about them and you can't really relate to them. Actually, in some moments, you might even feel more sympatetic for Dr. Heiter then for them. We must point out that Ashley C. Williams (Lindsay) stood out amongst them in the way she used her eyes while being the part of the human centipede. 

                     After watching this movie we can say that we are dissapointed by some peoples opinions that this movie is dull and flat written. People have unrealistic expectations and we believe that many of them didn't get the point that this movie was aiming for. It is evident that the premise of the movie is to be a gortesque dark comedy and in a way it mocks many of the modern high budget horrors that lack originality. This clearly can be seen in the way the movie uses standard cliches souch as the flat tyre, two stranded hot chicks, no GSM reception (come on, this is Germany we are talking about), a zoomed in telephone in one of the scenes where one of them tries to escape. Considering all this, we think that people took this too seriously analysing all of those plot "holes". This movie is not even trying to be serious and we must applaud the director and the writer Tom Six for his sophisticated sense of the dark humor. Judging by everything we heard and read about this movie we expected it to be very grose, disgusting and disturbing, but it didin't have that efect on us.

Actualy we found it to be more concentrated on the idea then on the realization itself. We can't remember when was the last time we had so much laughter during or after some movie ( if you have a sense of humor like us you'll be laughing, for example, at the scene where the japanese guy has to shit and starts to pray for forgiveness while the girl on his ass has this terrified look of inevitable horror that is coming her way).

During this whole time Dr. Heiter was having the time of his life. He was excited like a little baby when he saw his relized experiment for the first time after the operation (kissing his own image in the mirror :) ). The way he treated this newly formed centipede was even more hilarious (he was training them to behave like a dog :).

                     We believe that the writer had a serious problem from trying not to laugh too much while he was coming up with this whole scenario. Since this is called the "First Sequence" we can't wait to see what will they do in the next one. The one thing that is hard not to notice is the fact that the European doctor used three non Europeans to be the part of the centiepede. This makes us imagine all sorts of the scenarios where an American doctor takes on revenge on the Europens and makes a centipede out of them :) ). That would give the whole European Union a new meaning, Europede!

                     After all said and done we would highly reccomend this movie if you are into a fresh and amusing ideas, but we are also real and know that this is not for everyone because it can easily be interpreted in a wrong way.

Our score:

Liz: 8/10

Kyle: 7/10