Entertainment

Oh God, the Director of 'The Human Centipede' Is Back

In the new trailer for Tom Six's 'The Onania Club,' a group of women gets horny for tragedy.
Bettina Makalintal
Brooklyn, US
screenshot-trailer-the-onania-club-by-director-tom-six-human-centipede
Screenshot via YouTube

Ten years ago, the Dutch director Tom Six began his six-year-long assault on our emotions and gag reflexes with the release of the instantly infamous The Human Centipede, a movie—if you have somehow had the pleasure of forgetting—about a deranged surgeon who takes three unsuspecting victims and sews them together mouth-to-ass. The saga, unfortunately, continued for two more movies, with similarly deranged sequels in 2011 and 2015.

Advertisement

After a four year hiatus, Six is back with a new movie called The Onania Club. While it doesn't sound quite as fucked as the Human Centipede franchise—and how exactly can you top a series that once involved connecting twelve people mouth-to-anus?—it does appear to be also quite unhinged. As IndieWire put it, The Onania Club revolves around a "secret masturbation society." Just take that one in: Secret. Masturbation. Society.

The term "disaster porn" has come to refer to the constant loop of horrific imagery in our modern world, but in Six's The Onania Club, the term is more literal. In the movie's first teaser trailer, which was released yesterday, videos, images, and discussions of tragedy cue disconcerting heavy breathing and secret trips to the ladies room for some, uh, self-love for a specific group of women. "Hanna secretly joins a group called The Onania Club. Its members, strong independent L.A. bound women, get aroused by the misery of others," reads the movie's official synopsis.

While the movie appears a little more tame than Six's previous franchise for now, Six has promised that it will be "one of the most vile, inhumane movie experiences of all time." That's a high bar given not just Six's previous work, but also the recent release of movies like this year's The Painted Bird, which has prompted mass panic and walk-outs, and Liberté's graphic depictions of sex and torture.

According to IndieWire, the movie will be presented to distributors next month, so its release date isn't yet clear. For now, you can watch all the moaning and writhing of The Onania Club here, and hope to clear your mind of any lingering memories of The Human Centipede.