I must say I am a pretty uninformed movie goer sometimes. Case in point, I knew very little other than the basic premise for Splice going into it. However, I also knew that it received largely positive reviews when it screened at festivals earlier in the year, that it was a surprising pick-up by Warner Brothers, and it was going to be launched into theaters across the country to battle such populist dreck like Shrek and Marmaduke. I was expecting a well-done, but mostly generic sci-fi horror thriller but Splice is much more than that.
Clive and Elsa are scientists under the wing of a pharmaceutical company tasked with synthesizing proteins to combat a gaggle of biological baddies, mostly for commercial uses. After successfully splicing genes from multiple species to create a miniature Starship Troopers brain bug, they want to advance their work and splice human genes. When this is shot down by the greedy bosses, Clive and Elsa forge ahead with the intention to terminate the experiment before it births an organism. This does not go to plan and soon after they have created a being of sorts who starts off looking like a bald, mutated guinea pig before developing human characteristics. Mayhem then ensues.
Or, scratch that. Mayhem really does not ensue after all. Co-writer and director Vincenzo Natali could have taken the picture down the lazy river and had the human-ish thing, affectionately named Dren, escape and go apeshit on society at large. It is shocking that a major studio would allow such a leisurely story as mostly it revolves around Clive and Elsa, their relationship, and their ties to Dren as she develops further. The cast is small, the focus is tight, and the action and carnage is limited to a few scenes here and there. While I tagged this under the category of horror, drama would almost be a more appropriate genre to place Splice under as human relationships and interactions fuel the story more than gore and death scenes.
Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley are great as the couple, involved both professionally and intimately. As the film progresses, they leave questioning the morality of bringing Dren into the world and instead focus on their responsibilities towards her. Very easily could the two leads have sat around, wringing their hands with guilt and fear over the implications of Dren’s existence but instead the three become a sort of dysfunctional family complete with unspoken anger and underlying hostilities towards one another. Polley has the biggest load here as Elsa is not only fighting the demons of her childhood and her negligent mother but also the urge to become like her as Dren becomes too much to handle as she progresses.
The fortunate thing about Splice is that Dren is at least seventy-five percent human being with a modicum of CGI thrown in to create her four fingered hands and disjointed legs. In the majority of the movie, Delphine Chanéac plays the creature with the same attributes as an infant or young animal with wide eyes of curiosity but a bad attitude when things do not go her way. Chanéac’s acting goes a long way though to sell the subtle head turns of confusion like a dog and learning to dance as a young lady which not only let us invest in the character and her “journey” but also in Clive and Elsa as they struggle to gasp the effects of their short-sidedness.
The only real issue with the film was the climax which not only seems unnecessarily rushed but also shoehorns in random characters that seem to only serve as a way to increase the body count. As it is a fairly intimate movie between the three main characters, I would have rather they be the only parties involved as a way to wrap up the story in the same fashion that it began. That minor quibble aside, Splice is the complete antithesis to what a similar concept would have yielded in the hands of SyFy or The Asylum. It has heart, it has depth, and it is a good movie. Mega Piranha or The Terminators cannot say that.
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