Film

The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

Name: The Human Centipede (First Sequence)
Genre: Horror
Released: 2009
Cast: Ashlynn Yennie, Akihiro Kitamura, Andreas Leupold, Dieter Laser, Peter Blankenstein

Body horror
Very dark
Strange

A horror film about two American tourists who break down in rural Germany and encounter a brilliant, deeply unhinged surgeon with a grotesque surgical obsession. It's genuinely inventive body horror that commits fully to its premise, designed to provoke and disturb rather than entertain. For viewers who prize originality and transgression in cinema.

TMDb rating

2.6

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy transgressive horror that treats its premise as a dare, and you care more about provocation and bleak, airless atmosphere than jump scares or a tidy plot.

Skip it if you need characters to root for or a story that rewards patience, since this is nasty, cold and deliberately hard to sit through from start to finish.

What it asks of you: Ninety-two minutes of confined settings and held silences, where the discomfort builds slowly and rarely gives you a laugh or a breather to come up for air.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Hostel2006

Captures that same dread of tourists vulnerable in foreign spaces, with Eli Roth's command of tension and a premise that escalates in ways you won't anticipate. Satisfyingly brutal.

But The second half pivots toward conventional revenge thriller that feels smaller than the setup. Some of the torture sequences are gratuitous rather than purposeful.

A Serbian Film2010

Made around the same time, it's equally committed to transgression and body horror as a language. Fiercely intelligent beneath its extremity, with genuine artistic ambition underneath the provocation.

But Genuinely punishing to watch and morally murky in ways that won't resolve neatly. The graphic sexual violence isn't there to titillate but it's there, extensively.

Martyrs2008

French extreme horror that takes its philosophical premise—suffering as transcendence—dead seriously. The first half is a thriller; the second hour deconstructs horror itself with stunning craft.

But The philosophical arguments wear thin under scrutiny. After a certain point it becomes a slog of graphic suffering without the payoff that would justify it.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

eXistenZ1999

Both treat the body as a site of radical transformation through surgical intervention, but where Heiter pursues violation and control, Cronenberg pursues pleasure and ontological confusion.

Cronenberg's science-fiction body horror operates in a completely different register: playful, philosophical, genuinely erotic. It asks what happens when bodies become text, making extreme surgery feel almost intimate. A response to transgression through transmutation rather than violation.

But The plot is deliberately labyrinthine and never quite resolves. If you want narrative clarity and emotional payoff, this offers ideas instead.

Tusk2014

Kevin Smith's fever dream about body modification obsession is genuinely unhinged, darkly funny, and features a performance from Michael Parks that's utterly committed to the horror.

But The tone careens wildly between comedy and grotesquerie. It's a wild lurch tonally that works sometimes and feels confused other times.

The Skin I Live In2011

A Spanish surgeon obsessed with creating perfect skin—exploring body horror and obsession through a lens of genuine emotional complexity. Gorgeous filmmaking wrapped around something deeply twisted.

But It's fundamentally a love story, which some will find precious. The reveal shifts the film's moral register in ways that demand acceptance you may not be willing to give.

Audition2000

Takashi Miike's masterpiece of suspense: a widower finds what he thinks is his ideal woman, then the film does something genuinely unsettling. The last act is baroque body horror that earns its extremity.

But It's very slow for a long stretch, with an almost romantic tone that some will find tedious before the payoff arrives.

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom1976

Pasolini's final film is a philosophical argument expressed through extreme imagery. It's brilliant, radically transgressive, and genuinely difficult in ways that matter. Cinema as provocation with real ideas behind it.

But It's obscene and scatological by design, featuring rape, coprophagia, and murder as visual arguments. Not difficult to watch—actively designed to be as hard as possible.

Raw2017

A French-Belgian film about a vegetarian's descent into cannibalism that's both a feminist coming-of-age story and body-horror nightmare. Stunning direction, genuinely unsettling, and thematically coherent.

But The second half asks you to sympathize with someone committing serious violence. It doesn't flinch from that moral complexity, which will turn away viewers seeking clearer judgment.

The Wailing2016

South Korean folk horror that builds toward something genuinely cosmic and disturbing. Na Hong-jin's direction is assured, and the final images stay with you in ways that suggest something deeper than shock.

But It's two and a half hours, deliberately paced, and the philosophy at its core won't click for everyone. Ambiguous in ways that frustrate as much as intrigue.

Under the Skin2014

Both pursue the violation of human bodies as their central image, but where The Human Centipede commits to grotesquerie as horror, Under the Skin treats violation with an almost cold scientific remove that's somehow more disturbing.

Jonathan Glazel's alien-abduction film is experimental science fiction expressed almost entirely through mood and image. It's haunting, gorgeous, and explores alien violation of human bodies—but filtered through art cinema rather than exploitation. Hypnotic.

But There's almost no dialogue and minimal plot. If you need narrative structure and character arcs, this is an endurance test of mood over meaning.

Possession1981

Both feature surgical/biological transformation of the human body at their core, but Żuławski's film uses mutation as metaphor for psychological dissolution, where The Human Centipede treats it as literal nightmare.

Andrzej Żuławski's Polish nightmare, shot in West Berlin, is deliberately incoherent—a marriage collapsing into literal demonic possession and body horror, filmed with feverish, operatic intensity. Unhinged but visionary, more interested in anguish than exploitation.

But It's structurally chaotic and deliberately hard to follow. The 116-minute cut is relentless, punishing, and offers no catharsis or clarity.