The #1 Most-Disturbing Horror Movie Trilogy is Now Streaming Online
There was a period of time where I wanted to see every horror movie imaginable. It was the early days of Netflix DVD rentals, pre-streaming, and I’d just gotten a portable video player, so I could finally watch Mulholland Drive away from prying eyes in the seventh grade. There was no oversight on my Netflix queue, so I was pretty much free to rent whatever I wanted, and baby, middle school Chad thought he was prepared for the most extreme horror out there. I rented Hostel, Inside, Martyrs, High Tension—the whole lot of early aughts extreme horror cinema.
I even pushed my boundaries further, renting titles like Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (horrifying), and A Serbian Film (terrible, I didn’t finish it). It’s part of everyone’s horror education, I think. That inclination to see what the message boards can’t stop hailing as the nastiest, most disturbing movies ever made was strong, and it’s why I eventually had the urge to rent the controversial Dutch body horror staple The Human Centipede (First Sequence). The worst part is I thought it’d be wise to invite some friends over to watch it with me. They knew I was a horror fan, but I didn’t think they knew I was that kind of fan. Well, you can now relive your trauma (and mine) since all three films in Tom Six’s trilogy are now streaming on horror service Shudder.
Per Shudder: A demented doctor sews three people together in a sickening science experiment. During a stopover in Germany, two American girls find themselves alone in the woods after their car breaks down. Lured to the house of a deranged surgeon, they find they’re going to help him realize his ultimate fantasy: to connect three people via their gastric system and create ‘the human centipede.
Shudder is a must-have for horror fans streaming today. There’s so much incredible stuff on there, it’s honestly staggering. It’s also home to movies like The Human Centipede (First Sequence), a title I haven’t thought about once since 2009. I knew there were sequels, but I never got around to watching them because I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Their arrival on streaming might change that, if only for the morbid curiosity, but those subtitles, man; Full Sequence and Final Sequence? The first sequence was enough!
They’re cult oddities, however, and there’s no denying they helped shape the horror discourse in the 2010s. They were the last of an era of extreme horror as the genre shifted toward found footage scares and, eventually, legacy sequels. Our original review of the first film was unconventionally positive, arguing, “At a time when the horror genre is crying out for originality, a work such as this cannot go ignored.”
Critical reviews across the board weren’t quite as strong, and subsequent entries performed worse. By the Final Sequence time, I think the novelty had worn off. As a staple of horror history, however, the might and horror of The Human Centipede cannot be ignored. Catch it streaming now on Shudder.
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