Is Human Centipede 2010's Most Barfiest Movie?

"You do it."

"No, you do it."

"I really think you should be the one covering it."

There is a game of Hot Potato that we've played at Movieline HQ over the past few months, and it has to do with a gross little movie called The Human Centipede.

If you were blessedly ignorant of this upcoming horror film, here's the synopsis:

During a stopover in Germany in the middle of a carefree road trip through Europe, two American girls find themselves alone at night when their car breaks down in the woods. Searching for help they find only an isolated villa, whose mysterious owner, Dr Heiter, takes them in for the night. The next day they awake to find themselves in the basement, trapped in a terrifying makeshift hospital with another one of the doctor's abductees. Dr Heiter explains to the three of them that he is retired surgeon who had specialized in separating Siamese twins. However his three "patients" are not about to be separated, but joined together in a horrific operation. He plans to be the first to connect people, one to the next, via their gastric system, and in doing so bring to life his sick lifetime fantasy: 'the human centipede'.

Fun times, everyone! Distributor IFC promises that Human Centipede is a film that will divide audiences, but even before that, it's divided critics into two camps: those who'll see it, and those who feel like they have to scrub the existence of the film from their brains. As someone who was terrified merely to Google Image Search for a still to accompany this post, I would call myself the latter. Still, for the sake of you, the Movieline reader, I IM'd critic Dave White (who's already seen the film) to discuss it.

Kyle: So, Human Centipede.

Dave: Have you seen it?

Kyle: Not yet. I'm trying to summon the courage.

Dave: Well, I will say that it is awesome. Phil at New Beverly said he thought it was a comedy and badly made. I read it completely differently. It's surprisingly restrained and is definitely funny, until it's not. Then it becomes this exercise in the director saying, "What's the worst possible thing that could happen to this or that character right now?" and then going for it, so it ends up this superbleak hopelessness jam.

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