No hole-to-hole stitching required in the human centipede story Creepy Crawly. Known in its home country of Thailand as The One Hundred (as in legs, duh), the film lets not only many centipedes run loose, but also a rather large one that gains size as it inhabits — then discards — a string of human hosts.
Co-directed and co-written by Chalit Krileadmongkon (The Beast Below) and Pakphum Wongjinda (2015’s The Mirror), it all goes down in a hotel during the COVID-19 outbreak, so guests are under a strict, 14-day quarantine. Every guest ignores the rules when the ’pedes impede.
That includes our nominal leads, prawn-allergic pretty boy Leo (Mike Angelo of Renny Harlin’s The Misfits) and blood-disordered pretty girl Tevika (Chanya McClory, Sang Krasue 2); however, all the characters are minimally drawn. Around the time Leo and Tevika get heroic, the tongue-in-cheek creature feature in an enclosed setting becomes reminiscent of Stephen Sommers’ Deep Rising.
The idea of an insect possessing people is unique, as far as I recall. As the big bug instantly bewitches people, the risus sardonicus evil washing over their face looks inspired by Asian horror manga — the good kind, from masters like Junji Ito, Kazuo Umezu and Hideshi Hino. We also have tentacles, or something like it, purely for impalement purposes. Passable overall, how well Creepy Crawly works scene to scene tends to run in inverse proportion to usage of rush-rendered CGI. —Rod Lott