The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)

Martin (Harvey) is a sweaty, pudgy security guard in a London parking garage, watching the original The Human Centipede on a loop while keeping a copious notebook about it. He lives with his shrieking-nag mum (Bridson) in a grotty flat, and is haunted by the abuse he suffered as a child. Surely his leering shrink (Hutchens) isn't helping. Eventually Martin gets up the nerve to attack a young couple, and now he's on his way to gathering 12 hostages that he can turn into the ultimate human centipede.

Martin doesn't say a word: he rolls his bulbous eyes, smacks his lips and groans with glee as he puts his vile plan in motion. He also clobbers his victims so frequently with a crowbar that it's amazing any of them remain alive. That may explain why none attempt to escape his warehouse torture chamber during the long stretches when he's out doing other things. On the other hand, they're able to muster the energy to moan loudly while creeping around on hands and knees after the centipede is assembled.

Six shoots this in black and white, which undercuts the violence but also feels like a contrived attempt to mimic Hitchcock's Psycho. Instead, it looks more like a cheesy comedy sketch. Harvey's performance is seriously nasty, and he's likely to get a lot of work as a drooling psychopath as a result, but everything about the character is so over-the-top that we never take him remotely seriously. He's vile but never actually scary.

But the real problem is that Six abandons his big ideas. This can be read as an exaggerated spoof of how some think nasty movies can trigger mentally unstable people into doing something horrible. Or it can also be seen as blackly funny exploration of the way child abuse creates monsters. These things actually draw out some laughter in the film's early section, but they are lost as the grotesque violence turns both extreme and increasingly pointless.