Oh come on! Enough of Tom Six until he really tries something new.

Look, I was mildly impressed by the restraint shown in The Human Centipede. But when I saw The Human Centipede 2 I wasn’t shocked or upset. Was I grossed out? Certainly (you got me there, Tom! Congrats!). But more than anything I just felt kind of sad that anyone would spend their time on such a thing. I’m not one to say he doesn’t have the right to be making these things, of course he does. I just think it’s a waste of time. The prevailing thought was that the film was a “f*ck you letter to both fans and critics of the original film”. My thought was, “why not just write a letter instead? Why spend another year of your life on this”?

Now he wants you to know about his paintings, and they’re a real hole in the head to the (reaaallly reaching) intellectualization that “Six is so meta by using his protagonist to assess the mental state of his fans”. I might have bought that yesterday.

Not anymore. If Six had let that film be his statement and gone on to do something outside of his established wheelhouse, that would make sense. But by continuing to tread water in a sea of retarded sexuality (and violence and poopy jokes) he’s really just becoming Martin himself, isn’t he? The most provocative artists can use the shocking to make their audience view themselves and their world through a different lens. Tom Six has now used the shocking to expose himself as perhaps what he dreads the most – boring and banal.

I’m not shocked. Im not upset. I’m not even really grossed out. If this dude wants to spend his time creating images that make him seem like a 4th Grader as re-imagined by Rob Zombie (I could totally see these hanging in the room of Zombie’s young Michael Myers) that’s his right. But with each passing day that he contributes to this, it becomes more evident that he may never actualize his true talent as a filmmaker.

I suppose there’s a nugget of punk rock ethos in these, but given his past body of work there’s really no expectation left to subvert. Except for predictability.

I’ve included one of the SFW pics after the jump, There’s also a link to see the others – but they’re all pretty much NSFW. This one’s all right I guess. It could be be a Flipper album cover or something. The rest are here and they’re mostly terrible.