May 24th, 2015 
James Shotwell 
Film: The Human Centipede: Final Sequence
Starring: Dieter Laser, Laurence R Harvey, Eric Roberts, Bree Olson
Directed by: Tom Six
Tom Six has somehow managed to ruin the fun of body horror and exploitation in just three films. If I wasn’t so pissed about that fact I might applaud him, but then again probably not as I have unfortunately sat through each of his three increasingly unwatchable feature-length creations.
The Human Centipede: Final Sequence serves as the final chapter of Tom Six’s medically impossible trilogy of extreme body modification and the monsters who carry it out. The film stars Dieter Laser and Laurence R. Harvey, the stars of the two previous chapters, only this time they each play entirely new characters who exist in a world where the first two Centipede films also exist. Harvey’s character — a lonely prison accountant — is even a fan of the series. Laser’s character, a blowhard warden with a bad attitude and even worse acting chops, thinks they’re stupid. None of this matters much, as everyone knows going into this film that a new creature will eventually emerge, but you almost want to praise Six for taking the time to set up a fictional universe that takes the idea of meta storytelling to a new extreme. Again, I said almost.
The plot of Final Sequence revolves around a prison, presumably in Texas, where Laser’s character rules like a drunken fool who somehow stumbled into power at the height of the dark ages. He is ruthless and crass in every way imaginable, taking advantage of any situation he can in order to manipulate, sodomize, and/or tear down anyone in his immediate vicinity. He also likes to eat fried clitorises because he believes they are a source of great power, but that may in fact be the least repulsive aspect of his character.
Not long after the film begins Laser is informed that he must find a way to cut costs at his facility or he will be out of a job (as explained by Eric Roberts, whose appearance in the film is, at all times, baffling). In a moment of drunken panic, which follows a nightmare sequence where prisoners rape the warden by cutting a hole in his kidney, Laser decides his accountant’s favorite films may in fact hold the answer. He then meets with Tom Six (played by the man himself), who informs him of the legitimacy of the science behind the franchise, and soon begins piecing together what eventually amounts to a massive, 500-person centipede.
Would you believe it takes over an hour for the initial planning of the third centipede to begin? Viewers must first spend an hour in cinematic hell, watching Laser and Harvey chew their way through scenery like wild animals who have gone weeks without food. Unless Roberts is on the screen, which is only five minutes of the entire film, not a single person on camera seems to have any idea what they should be doing in the moment other than overacting to a degree as extreme as the body modification at the center of the series. To make matters worse, the dialogue is downright atrocious, lacking both substance and flair. It’s all emotionally dead on arrival, even at its most gratuitous, and you often wonder if Six is just making things up as scenes carry on.
Poor direction and horrible dialogue can be forgiven if a story can hold your attention, but there is very little, if anything, to find engaging about Final Sequence. Six has shown us all his tricks before, and now he’s turned to scraping the bottom of the idea barrel both for laughs and scares, neither of which are present in the actual film. Attempts at each are, sure, but no one involved in the making of this debacle can muster the talent needed to make a single frame come to life.
The Human Centipede: Final Sequence is such a colossal waste of time that I actually found myself wondering what I had ever found intriguing about the initial franchise entry. Six seemed so capable of changing horror forever at the time, but now he’s revealed himself to be nothing more than a one trick pony who somehow convinced people to bet on him two times more than he deserved. Final Sequence is not just the worst film I’ve seen this year, but is in fact the worst film I’ve seen in two full years, if not more. There is not a single sequence I would salvage if given such an opportunity. In fact, if given the opportunity I would have handed Six a can of gas with a pack of matches while he was still in the editing bay and encouraged him to take the insurance money while he still had the chance.
GRADE: F
Written by: James Shotwell Follow @utgjames
- 2015’s Most Underrated Films - December 29, 2015
- Passing The Torch: The End Of An Era For UTG - December 1, 2015
- UTG PREMIERE: Before The Streetlights – “Private Browser” - November 26, 2015
Posted in 
Tags: 