The New Zealand film censor at the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC). Has banned Tom Six’s Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence).
The film was banned as ‘objectionable’ on 4th April 2012.
The OFLC summarised its reasons for the ban:
The publication is a DVD containing a sequel to a well-known horror film and a number of extra components relating to its development and marketing.
The availability of the publication is likely to he injurious to the public good.
The feature is an unsubtle portrait of a sexually deranged man who tortures a group of largely anonymous victims in extreme, unflinching detail. Despite the occasional flashes of humour and a degree of sub-textural irony, these elements are overwhelmed by the feature’s sustained, gratuitous focus on victims’ torture, mutilation, forced defecation, rape and murder. These images are linked by a threadbare plot that provides limited narrative justification.
While the feature does not promote or support this material, the likely injury to the public good is one of inuring people more generally to cruel, violent and degrading material through its presentation as entertaining, and of eroding the viewer’s ability to empathise with others. This material would disturb and shock most people.
Consideration was given to offering excisions in order to remove the strongest images, however due to the pervasiveness of this material excisions were not deemed practical.
While the classification is an absolute restriction on the freedom of expression as contained in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, it is a restriction consistent with Parliament’s intention that publications containing such a high extent and degree of torture, violence, cruelty, sexual violence and strongly degrading, dehumanising and demeaning material can be classified as objectionable to prevent the likelihood of injury to the public good.
