When it comes to horror films, there are not many that have been made that can usurp The Human Centipede (or any of its vomit-inducing sequels) for sheer depravity.
However, some movie viewers have recently discovered a film that runs the 2009 gross-out fest very close for its money.
In 2014, Kevin Smith - best known for cult classics such as Clerks, Mallrats and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back - wrote and directed walrus-based horror movie Tusk.
Yes, you read that correctly. Walrus-based.
Check out the trailer (if you dare):But this is not a Jaws-style film about a rogue killer walrus that decides it has a bloodlust for human flesh. Instead, it is something altogether more terrifying and disturbing.
Starring Justin Long, Haley Joel Osment, Genesis Rodriguez and Johnny Depp, Tusk is the story of brash, arrogant podcaster Wallace Bryton (Long) who, on a trip to Manitoba in Canada, is lured into the eerie mansion of retired seaman (stop laughing) Howard Howe.
If you want to avoid spoilers or simply wish to keep the last meal you ate in your stomach, stop reading now...
As it turns out, the creepy old guy in the creepy old mansion isn't who or what he seems, Surprise surprise. Instead, he is a certified lunatic who wants to surgically transform Long's character into a walrus, after being saved by a walrus during his childhood.
What transpires from here is, quite frankly, the most absurd and grotesque series of scenes you are ever likely to see.
And the human/walrus hybrid horror has not been well-received on TikTok, where user Heidi Wong said of the 2014 movie: “Out of all the horror movies that I’ve seen, this one gets to me the most.
"Tusk is about a podcaster who meets a crazy man who wants to turn him into a walrus, as in surgically turn him from a human to a walrus.
“This movie was worse than The Human Centipede to me.”
She also referred to the film as "unhinged".
Produced and released by A24, who are also responsible for other mind-bendingly brutal cult hits such as Midsommar and Beau Is Afraid, Tusk was met with mixed reviews nine years ago and doesn't seem to be attracting much in the way of love almost a decade on from its premiere.
Wong captioned a follow up video which depicted her thinking about the film, “Me watching a guy who was forced to be surgically turned into a walrus finally escape, only for his friends to put him in a zoo to live the rest of his life as an actual walrus.”
Tusk is the first instalment of Smith's planned True North Trilogy, which also includes 2016's Yoga Hosers, which starred Lily-Rose and Johnny Depp and the upcoming Moose Jaws which is, you guessed it, Smith's take on Jaws only with a moose instead of a great white shark doing the chomping on human flesh and bones.
Not content with appearing in just one ultra disturbing horror film, though, Long had also previously starred in Drag Me To Hell and then went onto play a role in 2022's Barbarian, where he is SPOILER ALERT forcibly breastfed by the movie's Mother monster before he later has his head ripped apart. A feelgood family romp if ever there was one.
