I watched two horror movies today...I had high hopes for at least one of them, and was giving the other the benefit of the doubt. I was ultimately disappointed with the outcome of both.

A couple days ago I came across this picture on im not right in the head.com. After reading several of the responses to it I determined that it referred to the movie Human Centipede. I have come across this movie before and thought the plot seemed stupid so I had no desire to see it...until I saw the pictures here (WARNING: These images might be disturbing to some, viewer discretion is advised).

(Figure 1)
So, I was surfing Comcast On Demand today and lo and behold Human Centipede was listed. I decided that I would watch it because I had determined, based on the pictures, that there would be certain inherent flaws in the design. If you have seen it then perhaps you've picked up on what I'm going to address here, if you haven't then here's a brief synopsis:

Two American girls on vacation in Germany have a flat tire and wind up at the house of a phenomenally deranged retired surgeon who is famous for separating conjoined twins. He has this wacky idea to create a "human centipede" by joining three subjects via their alimentary canals (see figure 1).

Who the hell comes up with this stuff?! The writer is Tom Six, a Dutch writer/director/producer. According to the official plot Human Centipede is medically accurate...Really? While the movie was certainly disturbing, it can hardly be considered "medically accurate." So, yeah, I have a few issues with it. Here's why:

1. While it may be possible to physically connect three people via their digestive tracts, it's not practical. Depending on your metabolism, food can take up to 20 hours to go from mouth to anus. This means that subject B (moving from left to right in figure 1) will not receive any "food" for a good day. That means that subject C won't be "eating" for about two days. While it is true that humans can survive an impressive length of time without food, eating feces does not constitute "food." Eating nothing but feces will ultimately kill you, either from the lack of nutrients or from the bacteria present. So, if subjects B and C don't die from the surgery itself, or from starvation, they will, most assuredly, not last too long on a diet of nothing but human waste.

2. And what about gas? Flatulence can be expelled with some force. Certainly this could result in subject B or C being winded, at best, and...ass-phyxiated at worst? (Sorry, it had to be done)

3. While humans may be able to last a while without food, they cannot last very long without water. Since subjects B and C are connected to the anus they are not going to be getting any water (unless they were connected to the urethra, as well, though the images and explanation given in the movie make it pretty clear this is not the case). So, if they don't die from anything else, they will die from dehydration.

4. I don't know about all y'all, but if someone was trying to force me to eat a turd I'm pretty sure I would either a) gag to death on it, or b) puke it back up. Since they are attached with no opening to the outside, if either subject B or C gagged or puked, they would, most likely, end up choking on or aspirating it to death. Either way, they die.

5. As was shown in the movie, the raw tissues, shewn together to create this aberration, on at least one of the subjects (C) became infected. Raw tissue and feces don't mix...at least, not with any good consequences.

6. Speaking of tissue...the Herr Doktor just happened to randomly find two American girls (taveling together, no less) and a Japanse guy who are tissue matches?! Yeah, that's realistic.

7. Any good surgeon (and, while the guy may be certifiable, he was considered a renowned surgeon) would already know this stuff. Sure he's a nut job, but I can't imagine him not having taken all this stuff into consideration since it seems that he thinks this is the "vision for mankind's future existence." Having already lost his "beloved 3-dog" he should've worked out the kinks that resulted in the canines' death before implementing his centipede version 2.0.

So, yeah, the movie was disturbing, gross even, but because of the flaws mentioned above I thought it was poorly conceived and it left me feeling cranky. Horror movies just aren't what they used to be.

Movie two was one I came across in the On Demand directory. It's called Wicked Little Things. I had never heard of it before. This is the one I had high hopes for. The synopsis made it sound like a pretty straight forward ghost story, which is fine, as long as it's done well. Well, it's neither straight forward nor a ghost story.

The movie blurb reads thus:

A widow and her two daughters, Sarah and Emma, move to a remote mountain home--however, she is unaware that the haunted home is situated near an old mine, where an early 20th century tragedy took place.

Sounds like a ghost story, right?

 

The IMDb blurb gives a little more detail:

Karen, Sarah, and Emma Tunney are all moving to a small town in Pennsylvania where, unknown to them, in 1913, a horrid mine accident trapped dozens of children alive, underground. But there's a problem. They're still alive.

Imagine my surprise (and chagrin) when it turns out the children are zombies...I'm not a big zombie movie fan because, frankly, zombie movies are stupid. So, while this movie started out pretty good, it quickly turned to crap. It would've been sooooo much better if they had been ghost children. But zombies? Come on! Clearly, they made them zombies just for the gore. Because, apparently, somebody thinks that gore = scary. Actually, it doesn't, it just equals lame.