Welcome to the Sewage
There are bad movies, and then there’s The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) — a cinematic experience so joyless, it makes food poisoning feel like a character arc. Written and directed by Tom Six, this 2011 film is not so much a sequel as it is a dare. It exists because someone looked at the first Human Centipede and thought, “Needs more feces.”
Six’s meta-approach this time around is to make a film about someone obsessed with the first film — a sort of mirror reflecting madness back at itself. Unfortunately, that mirror is smeared with things best left unmentioned, and what stares back isn’t horror but sheer exhaustion.
The Plot That Should Have Stayed in Therapy
Our protagonist — if that word still has meaning — is Martin Lomax (Laurence R. Harvey), an asthmatic, bug-eyed tollbooth attendant who looks like a melted wax figure of Paul Giamatti. Martin spends his days watching The Human Centipede (First Sequence) on a loop, eating canned food, and breathing heavily enough to qualify as a storm warning.
Martin decides to “honor” the original film by creating a twelve-person centipede using whatever household tools are available to people who shouldn’t own tools. His equipment includes duct tape, a staple gun, and what’s left of his sanity. What follows is not a narrative so much as a collection of acts so vile that describing them feels like filing a police report.
Six frames all of this in black and white, presumably to make it “artistic,” though it mostly resembles CCTV footage from Hell. The only splash of color comes during scenes of grotesque violence, as if to remind you that you’re watching a filmmaker who read Schindler’s List backwards.
Martin Lomax: The Everyman for No One
Laurence R. Harvey deserves… something. An award? A restraining order? He’s genuinely unsettling — a silent, wheezing creature who communicates through grunts, moans, and the occasional murderous tantrum. Harvey’s performance is impressive in the same way an open wound is impressive: you can’t look away, but you immediately regret it.
The character of Martin is meant to symbolize the dangers of obsession and media influence. Instead, he feels like a man-child version of Renfield who discovered YouTube horror compilations too young. Six wants us to see Martin as both victim and villain, but the film’s lack of empathy turns him into a one-note freak show. He’s not a person — he’s a symptom.
Body Horror Without a Body (of Work)
Where the first Human Centipede was clinical, surgical, and oddly restrained in its grotesquery, Full Sequence throws away the lab coat and dives headfirst into the sewer. There’s no tension, no pacing, just escalating disgust — a Rube Goldberg machine of human misery.
Tom Six reportedly wanted this sequel to be “100% medically inaccurate.” Mission accomplished. The first movie, for all its depravity, had structure and dark humor. This one has neither. Instead, it operates on pure shock value, and like most shock, the effect fades quickly. You start horrified, then repulsed, then numb, then oddly hungry for a better movie.
The irony is that The Human Centipede 2 isn’t even particularly scary. Horror implies atmosphere, dread, or at least suspense. This film has none. It’s just a parade of degradation played without rhythm or restraint — less Texas Chainsaw Massacre and more Public Access Nightmare.
When Art Thinks It’s Philosophy
Tom Six insists his work is satire — a critique of both audiences who crave extremity and the media that feeds it. But satire requires wit, and wit requires restraint. The Human Centipede 2 has the restraint of a toddler with a flamethrower.
The “meta” premise — a fan recreating the horror movie he loves — could have been fascinating if handled with intelligence. Instead, it’s like watching a parody written by someone who doesn’t understand the word “irony.” The film winks at you, but the wink feels like a nervous tic.
It wants to say something profound about desensitization, yet it’s the cinematic equivalent of yelling “ARE YOU DESENSITIZED YET?” while stapling your eyelids shut.
Violence Without Meaning, Meaning Without Point
There are films that use violence as commentary — A Clockwork Orange, Funny Games, Martyrs. And then there’s The Human Centipede 2, which uses violence the way a toddler uses crayons: everywhere, with no purpose, and usually on the wrong surface.
Every scene pushes further into the grotesque, but without escalation of narrative or theme. It’s just noise — a symphony of screams and bodily fluids performed for an audience of none. Even the most notorious moments (the barbed-wire sequence, the laxative chain reaction) play less like horror than endurance testing.
It’s shocking, yes, but not because of what it shows — because of how empty it is. There’s no catharsis, no commentary, no artistry. Just suffering for the sake of seeing how long you’ll keep watching.
The Film Stock Needs Therapy
The black-and-white cinematography might trick you into thinking you’re watching something stylish or deliberate. Don’t be fooled. The aesthetic isn’t “art film” — it’s “security footage from a condemned building.” The lighting is harsh, the editing chaotic, and the sound design a relentless mixture of screams, gasps, and the world’s least necessary digestive noises.
Every creative decision seems engineered not to provoke emotion but to punish curiosity. Even the choice to eliminate all color feels less like symbolism and more like an apology: “If you could see this in color, you’d sue.”
The Audience as the Real Victim
Watching The Human Centipede 2 feels like an act of mutual self-harm between filmmaker and viewer. The audience is complicit — we clicked “play,” after all — but Six seems determined to make us regret that choice on a spiritual level.
The experience is so unpleasant that it transcends simple disgust and becomes almost meditative. Somewhere between the third stapling and the fourth scream, you start asking philosophical questions: Why do I exist? What is art? Is there still time to turn off the TV and go outside?
By the end, when the film loops back to Martin watching The Human Centipede again, you realize you’ve been part of the cycle all along: the horror of endless repetition, both in fiction and in bad filmmaking.
The Only Thing More Disturbing Than the Movie Is the Fact It Exists
It’s easy to dismiss The Human Centipede 2 as mere provocation, but that gives it too much credit. It’s not bold — it’s desperate. It wants to shock, offend, and disgust, but it never dares to be smart. It mistakes transgression for art, cruelty for depth, and nausea for meaning.
Even its controversy feels hollow. The bans, the censorship, the moral outrage — all of it served to make the film seem dangerous. In truth, it’s not dangerous at all. It’s just boring in a particularly sticky way.
Final Thoughts: The Art of Eating One’s Own Tail
If The Human Centipede (First Sequence) was a horror curiosity — a grotesque experiment you could at least discuss — Full Sequence is its bloated, self-devouring sequel. It exists in a cinematic ouroboros, feeding endlessly on its own filth, daring you to keep watching as it consumes itself.
Laurence R. Harvey gives it his all, and for that, he deserves applause, or perhaps therapy. But everything else — the writing, the pacing, the relentless fixation on revulsion — is a monument to bad taste without self-awareness.
The Human Centipede 2 isn’t a movie. It’s a dare you lose by accepting.
Verdict: ★☆☆☆☆
A 91-minute colonoscopy of the human psyche — without anesthesia, without insight, and definitely without a reason to exist.
