REVIEW: 'Splice' mutates into not-quite-successful thriller hybrid
Both colleagues and lovers, Clive and Elsa (Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, two indie actors not known for their genre work) are rock star scientists, genetic engineers who bump into their faces on magazine covers every time they turn around.
Already celebrated for creating a new larva-like life form by splicing together the DNA of numerous animal donors, the pair decide to run a clandestine experiment to see if it is possible to fuse the existing hybridized DNA material with that of a human being.
The result is a humanoid creature that gestates at an incredible rate, one minute appearing like a little girl and only days later a young woman.
Oh, and did I mention that she can fly and has a whip-like tail complete with a stinger that she uses as a bayonet?
Though repulsed at first, Clive soon begins to view the creature they’ve named Dren (nerd spelled backward) as the next leap in human evolution.
For her part, Elsa, who is desperate to start a family, takes to Dren (Delphine Chanéac) as her own daughter, in a grotesque parody of parenting.
For a while anyway, they are a happy family.
But as Dren continues to evolve, both of her “parents” begin to suspect that they may have made a catastrophic mistake. In playing God, they may have unleashed the devil.
“Splice” is itself a half-breed — part icky monster movie, part overwrought psychodrama. Neither is very successful.
Writer/director Vincenzo Natali is good at creating a Frankenstein story with decidedly Cronenbergian influences. He knows when to get out of the way and let some rather good special effects take over for his run-of-the-mill writing.
But, in the end, “Splice” is just another silly, and at times, laughably bad B-movie, with no logic other than to back itself into impossible corners that it must then fight its way out of, rather than simply write smarter scenes to begin with.
It doesn’t help that “Splice” is populated with your typical mad scientist types who run around saying things like “What’s the worst than can happen?” and “Just think of the loss to science if we destroy it!”
“Splice” is actually very sympathetic to its monster. And why shouldn’t it be? Part “Species” and part “E.T.,” Dren’s only sin is being born and, later, trying to survive.
This sympathy actually works well for the story, though it is abandoned for a messy and clichéd finale, complete with a twist you can see coming from a mile away (the sequel, should the film do well at the box office, is every bit as detectable).
“Splice” is not very scary, nor does it ever really startle.
It disturbs for very different reasons (I would have loved to have been in the MPAA theater after an interspecies sex scene surely sent the ratings board scratching their heads in bewilderment).
Shortly before he died, novelist Michael Crichton wrote an essay titled “Ritual Abuse, Hot Air and Missed Opportunities,” in which he discussed the stereotype of the mad scientist in movies.
“Why are the stories about science always so negative?
“Why can’t we have positive stories? One answer is that people like scary movies. They enjoy being frightened.
“But the more important answer is that we live in a culture of relentless, round-the-clock boosterism for science and technology. But everyone knows science and technology are inevitably a mixed blessing.
“How then will the fears, the concerns, the downside of technology be expressed? Because it has to appear somewhere. So it appears in movies, in stories — which I would argue is a good place for it to appear.”
Funny thing about fiction though — the truth is often far stranger, and sometimes, even scarier.
GRADE: C+
SPLICE
Cast: Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley, Delphine Chanéac
Director: Vincenzo Natali
Theaters: Carmike, Chapel Hills, Cine-mark, Hollywood, Tinseltown
Rated: R (for disturbing elements including strong sexuality, nudity, sci-fi violence and language. )
Running time: 1 hour, 54 minutes
