"The Human Centipede" entered the public consciousness in a barnstorming manner that rendered the notion of 'spoilers' a moot point indeed; while no cinema within my general geographical plane played the film during its theatrical run, the Internet buzz and festival reviews I gleaned on several trusted websites piqued my interest considerably. Having gone out of my way to experience willfully uncomfortable films (sometimes for no other reason than to say I survived them), writer-director Tom Six's "Centipede" quickly shot to the top of my must-see list. The subsequent viewing experience was a wild, over-the-top mixture of morbid, absurd humor, queasy unease, and unrelieved, batsh1t-crazy horror. To call Six's narrative structure "tonally inconsistent" would be an understatement; the film progresses through three distinct acts: the first consists of two rock-stupid American girls vacationing in Germany, whose car trouble echoes the "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"; the second consists of the girls (and a Japanese businessman) falling prey to the deranged machinations of Dr. Heiter (the wonderfully unhinged Dieter Laser); and the third is a descent into desperation, madness, and violence that few horror films successfully pull off. Throughout, Six is keenly aware of the mad-scientist improbability of his scenario, but creates a paradox in presenting a world where a man could harbor notions of three people sharing the same digestive tract; as such, there is also a thread of deliberate, pitch-dark humor that permeates the proceedings. While the tonal inconsistency of "The Human Centipede" suggests that Six should try harder to streamline his concepts into a more synthesized, less episodic whole, the film overall is a refreshing example of the originality of which the horror genre is capable.
