Oh my God. It's been about three days, and I'm still attempting to comprehend what I've just seen.
The Human Centipede (2009) apparently started as some sort of joke between friends regarding their thoughts on how criminals, namely pedophiles, should have their mouths sewn to the rear end chute of an overweight truck driver. Somewhere between that joke and the movie itself, the director decided this was the perfect premise of a new and original horror film. And it is, but wow.
***** SPOILERS W/ SCREENCAPS AHEAD (may be NSFW) *****
The following overly-verbose review of the events in the movie will include personal opinions and gripes. It will also be detailed regarding the events of the movie, but will not be exact, parts missing or a matter of interpretation.
The movie starts with us meeting the main antagonist, Dr. Josef Heiter, in a car, apparently mourning over some pictures of his dogs. Due to the budget and possibly the intent to not fully prepare the viewer for what was to come, you see three rottweilers standing in a row, and honestly it just looks like they're sniffing each other's butts. If you've owned dogs, you know that they are prone to this butt-sniffing train without the assistance of modern science.
As he sits and ;.;s over this picture, a semi-truck (or lorry if we're talking British) pulls up behind him and a fairly large man bolts out with a roll of toilet paper. He goes dashing across this overgrown area while the antagonist grabs a "gun" and runs out after him. The motions are so deliberate, you sit convinced that he just knew that this particular driver was going to need to take a dump right at that moment, in that very place. He aims as the guy is frantically squatting by a wall, and as the "gun" fires, it breaks scene.
After this, we're introduced to Lindsay and Jenny. Lindsay and Jenny are two American girls who are traveling through Europe for fun. They're preparing for a night out with some hot German waiter, and through their superb acting skills, we learn the aforementioned who they are, where they are, where they're going and the fact that they xoxoxoxo their other friend who called and racked up their phone bill by making them roam on their cell phone.
After this, the girls head off in a rental car, giving the big impression that they have their hands deep in their parents' pockets as it becomes incredibly clear very early on that Lindsay and Jenny are incompetent fools. They are not fit for normal, working class society. They get lost pretty quick, before suffering a flat tire in the middle of a German wasteland of trees and animals and... general nature.
It's during this scene that you really start to hate these two. Or at least become really annoyed with them. Their piercing shrieks at the flat and the lack of cell service (of which they believe should be available in all parts of the world always) wear thin on your soul. As they sit in the car, defeated by a flat tire, a car pulls up beside them. Reluctantly, Lindsay rolls down the window at Jenny's urgings, and attempt to communicate with the large, sweaty German man in the other car that is puffing on a cigar and speaking to them in the language of the land. As every American knows, when someone can't speak English, if you speak it louder and slower, they will eventually understand you. Lindsay and Jenny try this, but when it seems that the man is just too old, Jenny tries to decrypt what the man is saying with her German-to-English dictionary.
Discovering the man said something akin to 'fucking', Lindsay quickly rolls up the window and proceeds to avoid eye contact with the man as she and Jenny whine in panic. Looking over once, he wiggles his tongue at Lindsay, but eventually the man gets tired of trying to lure these hot American girls into his debonair 70-year-old pants and drives off.
The girls fight it out, conceding that neither one of them knows how tires work or how to change them, and Lindsay convinces the whining Jenny to get out with her and walk for help. This ends well, especially when Jenny decides she has had enough of the wilderness and rain. She crosses her arms, stomps her feet, and begins screaming that SHE'S NOT MOVING, because Lindsay can't make her. Five-year-olds are hard work. While she's fitting, Lindsay notices lights up ahead and says she thinks she sees a house and beckons for Jenny as she heads that way. Jenny says, "Somehow, I don't believe you!" but follows her anyway.
After they finally figure out what qualifies as the front of the house (I'm not joking), Dr. Josef Heiter answers the door. Since we already know he's no good, we find ourselves going :|. There are so many warning bells that they shouldn't stay there, such as when he asks them if they're alone, if they're related, but they don't seem to want to listen to their gut instincts and accept a drink of water from him. The man nearly has an orgasm on the couch across from them when they begin to feel the effects of the date rape drug that he slipped in their water. My friend put it best when we were watching it: “Yes, take the open glass of water from that creepy stranger.”
When the girls awake, they find themselves in some sort of hospital-like room, on hospital beds with IV drips in their arms. They’re next to one another, with Jenny between Lindsay and the trucker from the beginning of the movie. Heiter enters and explains that the trucker isn’t a match, and so he’s going to have to kill him. I’m assuming that he means that regarding genetics, the girls match one another whereas the trucker does not, and for his plan, the last thing he wants is something to reject. So, he euthanizes the guy. The girls freak out accordingly.
Heiter then acquires a young man named Katsuro, who only speaks Japanese. He’s placed in the trucker’s spot, and at this point the movie starts to focus a little more tightly on Lindsay. I’m still not sure why, when we don’t know anything about Lindsay beyond that she’s a cute American girl who was on vacay in Europe when this went down with her idkbffJenny. But get used to it.
Busting out the most epic overhead slide presentation ever, Heiter explains his plans.
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| Now, listen up, class. |
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| I have the BEST IDEA. Like, you have no clue. |
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| First!!! Imma cut your knees so you can still use them, but only to crawl around! Yay being a baby forever. |
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| Next, we're going to make your mouths and butts fit together like round pegs in round holes. LOL |
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| I know, there's the issue of slipping off each other, but I have that part covered too. Introducing butt flaps. |
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| Butt flaps go here. I have a brand new staple gun for this one. Half price at Wal-Mart. |
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| INSERT INTO HOLE |
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| ZIP! |
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| It's a trainy-train! God, I'm awesome. |
After this, the movie cuts to Heiter preparing to put them under anesthesia. After knocking out Katsuro, he moves to knock Jenny out. Apparently at a point of blocking out their whimpers and whines, he is completely oblivious when Lindsay breaks out of her binds and charges for the door. And Lindsay, so freaked out and eager to run like hell, forgets that she has that IV drip in her arm. The needle tears her arm wide open as she runs, and despite the obvious pain, Lindsay still makes a run for it.
This is the first time that I know I started caring for Lindsay and wanted her to escape. If only to spare me for the inevitable sight that I would not be able to unsee later.
During the chase, Lindsay ends up falling into Heiter’s indoor pool. This proves hilarious as he’s chasing her with a gun and she apparently thinks that holding her breath under the water will keep him away forever, forgetting that she needs air eventually. Heiter decides to activate the automatic pool cover, but just as it’s about to seal up over Lindsay, the power in the house dies. He charmingly shouts, “Sorry~” at the water, and frolics off to fix the problem.
This is when Lindsay makes two huge mistakes. People can argue it’s just that she’s an idiot, or that it was a lack of proper scripting. To be kind to the character, we’ll blame the adrenaline rush and blood loss combination for her two poor choices.
POOR CHOICE #1: Lindsay saw the same presentation we did, and understands that Heiter can’t do anything unless he has all three parts. Despite this, she makes the choice to run down to the basement lab and start dragging her sedated idkbff all the way upstairs and out a window in the master bedroom that Heiter broke during their chase.
POOR CHOICE #2: Right by the lab entry door, there is a phone on the wall. Now, based on later events, it can be argued that it’s only a phone that reaches the intercom of the front door. But at no point did Lindsay see this, so she had no way of knowing. She should have tried the phone. Landline phones work even when the power is out.
Anyway.
Somehow, Lindsay became Superwoman and managed to actually get Jenny out of bed, out of the room, up the stairs, through the house, to the master bedroom, out the window and across the lawn before getting hit with a tranquilizer dart by Heiter from behind. She lost the battle. She would lose the war.
The surgery itself is shown only in part. We see teeth pulled and some buttocks cut open. We see Heiter walk off and mope some places about his dog, and then afterwards we see him replace the window in his bedroom.
After this, we’re introduced to the human centipede he created. The movie actually handles this very well.
http://i921.photobucket.com/albums/ad57/terminalsonata/vlcsnap-2011-06-27-21h44m29s247.png Click that link to get the picture. It’s NSFW, but not due to any explicit gore or nudity. There is nudity and oddity though.
After observing his human centipede, Heiter takes to training and maintaining the three (Katsuro as the ‘head’, Lindsay as the ‘middle’, and Jenny as the ‘tail’) like a single entity and a pet. He tries to train them to do tricks, he makes Katsuro eat at his feet, at the dinner table, from a dog dish. They’re placed in a cage at night for sleep. When the ‘centipede’ acts out of line, he does render physical punishment with a horse riding crop. Punishment is severe and not just a maybe, as Katsuro does go as far as biting Heiter’s leg during dinner.
An unknown amount of time passes, and we see Heiter evaluating their healing processes. While Katsuro and Lindsay are healthy, Jenny is found to be suffering from a severe infection and will die. Presumably without treatment, though Heiter just tells the other two that he’s going to need to sever them from Jenny and then obtain a new ‘tail’. As luck would have it, that’s when two detectives show up on his doorstep and he leaves them on the exam table to speak upstairs with the detectives.
Being a lunatic, it seems that Heiter immediately sees the detectives as a gift to drug, kidnap and test for compatibility. 8| So, he offers them water as they ask his creepy ass questions about the two missing American girls. They accept, and being no smarter than the girls, they accept an open glass that has been RUFIE’D. The one drinks like a good boy, the other not so much. And after they leave, they note the bizarre (even outright explosive) behavior he exhibited during the conversation and go to handle being allowed to come back to search the premises.
Meanwhile, Heiter goes down to check out his centipede, and gets a scalpel to the foot and leg by Katsuro. After getting him on the ground and out of the way, the three victims make way up the stairs and for the master bedroom since Lindsay believes the window to still be broken there.
Summarizing the climax quickly as I’ve gone on long enough!!: the detectives do come back and under up dead, killed by Heiter and falling into his pool. Heiter ends up dead, shot through the head before the last detective falls into the water with his rufie’d and dead partner. Katsuro is dead after cutting his own throat rather than to meet his end at Heiter’s hands.
Jenny dies from her illness while holding Lindsay’s hand. Lindsay is then left there, anchored in front and back by corpses, and left in ambiguity as the camera pans up to the sky.
So, yes. The Human Centipede is a proper horror film with enough unexpected twists that it’ll keep it interesting. It lacks the elements that drive a viewer to pity and yearn for the survival of the characters, and has areas where it could have been improved by dialogue or action to simply make the drama and anxiety higher. I appreciate the fact that we’re left with not seeing the entirety of the connections between each person that made up the centipede, giving room to imagine it.
Which is why, reading about the plans for the second movie is bothering me. Allegedly, the director is going to make up for all the small nuances he used in the first by making it so graphic that the BBFC banned it over in the United Kingdom, and it’s not even ready for launch yet! :|
Anyway, there you go. The Human Centipede as I saw it.
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