There is one genuinely entertaining moment in the conclusion to Tom Sixs ass-to-magnum opus, The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence). Following a particularly nasty encounter with an inmate, penitentiary warden Bill Boss (The Human Centipedes Dieter Laser) proudly, arrogantly reiterates to the prisoners doctor, I castrated him. Without missing a beat, an exasperated Dr. Jones sighs, We know, Bill. Everybody knows.
If theres ever an audience surrogate in The Human Centipede 3aside from those forced to ingest shitit is in that moment, Dr. Jones. Anyone who endures the bore of a finale, which serves largely as an echo chamber for the series shock value concerns and gory content, will ultimately be left with a similar response. The audience is vile, and so is the world at large. We know. Therell be a 500-person pede because everything is bigger in Texas. Everybody knows.
Much of The Human Centipede 3 is focused on such blunt force convention. The Texas prison itselfan uninhibited, vile cesspool of torture, racism and rapeis named for George Bush for instance, while U.S. prison statistics are rattled off and all of Bill Bosss underlings go along with his deviance so as just to keep their jobs. Director Six stages all of this in excruciating and excruciatingly dull detail, his widescreen and often static camera takes on the frank observation of a nature doc, but none of the fascination.
Filling that widescreen frame is the warm, high noon glow of a western. Six is drawing with easy symbols here, as incisive as one can be from an armchair. This is a film about a sexually abusive, torture happy, cowboy-costumed tyrant who employs a seedy yes man and a porn star (poor Bree Olson, serially subjugated throughout). America.
Again, we know.
For all its pointedness however, The Human Centipede 3 is never as sharp as its predecessors. The Human Centipede proved an exercise in camp madness, while The Human Centipede 2 took on a so-grim-its-gonzo aesthetic to chastise its audience for wanting more explicit horribleness from the first film. It then proceeded to give it to them, while confrontationally forcing viewers to reconcile Laurence R. Harveys Martin as a squalid funhouse reflection.
As with the previous films, the ending of Part 2 feeds into Part 3, a meta movie centipede making Final Sequence some blend of both (Harvey is again a standout), reveling in deplorable acts and somehow enamored by Dieter Lasers agonizing performance. Here, its lacking any energy or atmosphere in the filmmaking to support either. The often flat frame yields nothing from close-ups of sliced (eventually digested) scrotum or boiling water-boarding, while Lasers shrill, garbled racial epithets, misogyny (in some cases both: Thank God for Africathank God for female circumcision) and the prisoners consistent threats of rape are all similarly impotent. Even when one character outright fucks an open wound, or Six himself shows up, playing and satirizing his oddball and twisted persona, it lacks humorous punch.
Six is overwhelming his work with such otherwise objectionable content both as an equal opportunity offender and to cast light on the chaos, corruption and distinct lack of rehabilitation that makes up the U.S. prison system. Theres got to be a better way, Six seems to be saying. Is he correct? Sure. Unfortunately, the way Final Sequence lets each scene drag, stammering and stumbling about like Lasers performance, no one will be riled up by any of it.
Eventually, like its 1 & 2, The Human Centipede 3s physical centipede is a late stage novelty, a final reveal. The movie itself becomes the actual creature however, the sad back end of a cult curiosity. Bigger, grosser, longer, duller.
