The Human Centifruge

Is it wrong to like 'The Human Centipede: Final Sequence'?

Six's third and final instalment of the centipede debacle, branded 100% politically incorrect, dishes up an expectant cacophony of corpulence and coprophagia. Sewn into the inference of its counterparts, the rearing head of the centipede trilogy gleefully satirises the judicial system in an exploitative penal perpetration that ebbs and arcs between impish lampoon or artistic gravitas.

Final sequence, for all of its faults, is an ingeniously crafted film. Soaked in a self-referentiality that equates to numerous storeys of ontology, Six's penultimate feature is a delectable conflation of actualities and realities rendering the spectator so far down a rabbit hole, its a never-ending abyss. For its complete relegations of historicity and symptomatic entwinement, the film never truly admits as to who is being exploited - a notion complicated further by Tom Six's acting involvement in the feature - rather it is the 'what' being exploited. Nee, the receptive essence of film itself, an implication undeniably ratified by dialogue as actors blurt out actual trolling reviews of Six's work.

The film itself is a queer arrangement. Stripped bare, its a garishly postmodern 'Frankenstein' (leads Dieter Laser and William Harvey are comically synonymous to Dr Frankenstein and Igor) with explicit repugnance its garnish. Whilst Six promised to 'go Dutch' in gruesome gratification - and seldom fails - the abhorrence of the feature is not just contained to its inextricable moments of disgust, though also its racial slurs, slander of stereotype and political ethics. Six inadvertently challenges us to interpret - and choose - as to what can be qualified and quantified as controversy - the 500 man centipede, or the reason why.

As to whether the film can be conceived as a 'good' film is an other and arguably irrelevant question, because it is not intended to be evaluated in the same way as other films. Its intention is to be paradoxical, to be avant-garde, to be different - and this it does well. But, to dictate by taste, it is both caviar and cack. For some, the hysterically inclined bellowing barbarian that is Dieter Laser will annoy, for some he will ensnare in all his enunciating glory. For some the film will be ridiculous, for others influential. Some will love it. Some will hate it - and then probably hate on the people who love it into getting them to say they hate it!

The purpose of Six's work, much alike Lars Von Trier, is to remonstrate. The centipedic body of texts is an intricate welding of artistry that surpasses the purpose of film to purely entertain. It is to be examined, to be visually consumed and independently contrived. One only has to consider the anti-authoritarian texts of the past to understand that the valorisation of cultural detritus - in the literal and the formal - is an art form in and of itself. Lobotomising conventional fodder, the darkly comedic and controversial 'Final Sequence' belongs to a stand-alone genre of shock ahead of its time.

Political correctness is the opposite of art!

— Tom Six (@tom_six) September 19, 2015