The Human Centipede II

Rating

Director

Tom Six

Screenplay

Tom Six

Length

1h 31m

Starring

Laurence R. Harvey, Ashlyn Yennie, Maddi Black, Kandace Caine, Dominic Borrelli, Lucas Hansen, Lee Nicholas Harris, Dan Burman, Daniel Jude Gennis, Georgia Goodrick, Emma Lock, Katherine Templar, Peter Blankenstein, Vivien Bridson, Bill Hutchens, Peter Charlton, Daniel de’sioye

MPAA Rating

Not Rated

Review

While it’s nice to see a director trying to improve on his vision and expanding his understanding of filmic form and function, when the end result is so self-aware that it’s almost ludicrous, you have a concoction like Human Centipede II.

The original film is just that, a motion picture. This is according to the mythos at play in the sequel, which is, instead of a sequel, is a real life attempt to recreate the work of a fictional figure. The mentally disturbed Martin (Laurence R. Harvey) works in a London carpark and is obsessed with the film Human Centipede. He’s so obsessed that he has begun abducting unsuspecting people inside the car park and transporting them to an empty warehouse where he hopes to turn twelve people into a single centipede, improving on the fictitious three-person centipede from the first film.

Writer/director Tom Six has chosen to shoot this film in black-and-white, a questionable decision until you discover just how much blood and other matter drenches this film. His original picture sticks to a minimal amount of gore for a horror film and adheres to common genre tropes. Now he has so much blood pouring out of the screen, an NC-17 rating would have been assured if it had been produced in color. This also minimizes the viscera the audience must endure and keeps it just shy of realism, not that the film does very well at keeping things realistic. What’s most interesting is that there are moments that embrace the style of the French New Wave but without the thematic or narrative complexity.

With so many hapless victims, telling them apart is incredibly difficult. While they are all suitably terrified, none stand out. That’s not true of the film’s demented psychopath. He’s at once both believably human and incredibly sinister. Harvey does a decent job conveying what the script doesn’t but it’s not much of a stretch considering the work around him. Still, finding a path to praise for the film is difficult. It’s Grade C horror at best and an interesting companion piece to the vomit-inducing original.

Blood gushing from crowbars to the head would typically result in death, but here only knocks the victims unconscious. Half of what goes on in the movie is so inauthentic at times, it almost becomes surreal. Unfortunately, it’s not the kind of surreal that demands appreciation. The Human Centipede II remains an interesting, if low quality, concept executed as mediocrely as possible. When the audience is more curious about the outcome than they are enthused, it would seem the film has failed to live up to all of its objectives. It’s not surprising but not welcome either.

Review Written

November 10, 2026