Don't get me wrong, as a hardcore horror buff since my preschool days, I understand the need for violence and gore at times. Hey, it's horror, people. It's not supposed to be pretty (unless you're Dario Argento). But in a time when the bar has been so continuously raised for more blood! more gore! more violence!, are we finally reaching our limits?
When director Eli Roth released "Hostel," shockwaves went through movie houses at the extreme violence it portrayed. In a nutshell, very bad Europeans decide to make some extra cash kidnapping backpackers and charging the super rich big bucks to be able to torture and kill them for sport. This stuff makes Stephen King look like Walt Disney by comparison. While "Hostel" was hardly the first movie to take gore to this level, it was one of the more mainstream successes in recent times and you all know what that means -- Hollywood needed to try to one-up "Hostel" in the ultra-violence department.
Hardcore Violence Integral, Integrated Well in Some Films
I don't have a problem with extreme violence in itself. I love many movies that go for the hardcore, like "Last House on the Left," "Midnight Meat Train," and the films of Italian giallo masters Argento or Lucio Fulci. I even like the original "Human Centipede."
What made "Hostel" and some of these other films work was that they didn't just rely on shock value and the hope that some distant countries like Singapore would ban them so the creators could proudly proclaim "our movie was banned in FIVE countries!" They understood that movies should integrate the horrors into them in a way that's integral to the story, and there should, in fact, be a story.
"Hostel" has plot, good acting, and some character development. I mean, it ain't exactly "The Hours" or anything highfalutin like that, but there are enough of those elements to at least know, and feel a little bad for, the poor fools being blow-torched and hacked up by sadistic Eastern Europeans.
I do, however, have a problem with a movie that uses gratuitous violence as a substitute for plot, character, acting, directing -- you know, the minor things. A major problem.
Others, Not So Much
Which brings me to "Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)." I was shocked to see this was directed by Tom Six, who did the original. Whatever finesse he showed in the first film, rather rough though it was, is lost for the sequel, except the casting of the lead maniac (Laurence R. Harvey). The plot, or what passes for such, is this creepy cretin works at a parking garage and decides to make his own human centipede by conking garage patrons on their heads to drag them off to his dirty warehouse and create the "full" 12-person sequence. What makes that "full," by the way, is beyond me. But then hey, if the cast and director seem to be clueless about facts and logic in the movie, why should I be enlightened?
I could spend all day pointing out things that don't make sense or are straight-up unbelievable, starting with this troll of a man being able to transport all those unconscious people himself when he looks like he can barely walk up half a flight a steps without having to use an inhaler. And how he manages to knock them out with blows to the head that always render them unconscious on the first try, yet without any of them dying from repeated concussions. Or how this half-wit could possibly be able to pull this off even with the "100% medically accurate" first film as a guide with a handful of kitchen tools.
And call me crazy, but I don't care how many staples you put in the sides of my face -- if it's stapled to the butt of someone in front of me who starts making a big load of poopoo in my mouth, you can bet I will pull my face outta there, and I mean now.
Shock Not Enough to Hold Together Lack of Plot
This film is nothing but a series of graphic scenes one after another, with some nudity and meaningless crude talk for a little extra shock value. Yawn. What passes for plot here is the brief, oh-so-Freudian references to child abuse and a domineering mother he inevitably dispatches. Golly, who could have seen that coming?
Porn movies have more plot. And, ultimately, "Human Centipede 2" is nothing more than the horror version of a porn movie, all gore and no substance. But it doesn't get your rocks off. Or at least let's hope not.
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