Splice (Review)

This year has a brought us some of the weirdest mainstream Hollywood films in history. In February we were treated to Scorsese’s Shutter Island, and now here is a film that is so strange, so wildly ambitious, and at the same time a bit of a misfire that it makes Shutter Island appear to have the narrative simplicity of Hotel for Dogs.

So we have been graced with the presence of Splice (not to be confused with the short-lived Canadian children’s cartoon Spliced!). Well, the premise seems simple enough: Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley star as a couple who also happen to work together at NERD as genetic engineers. They are able to successfully create life in two creatures that look like something your tongue would throw up. They want to go further to see what can be accomplished, while those ignorant executives would rather take the product to market immediately. Against orders they decide to try and synthesize an organism with human DNA involved. They succeed, and the result is a strange creature they decide to name Dren. They must keep the new creation a secret or otherwise they might end up job hunting/in jail, whichever’s worse. They raise the beast as if it is their child, but BOY, do they have another thing coming.

The previews/conventional wisdom would suggest that the monster just goes crazy and starts offing people. I mean, that’s the horror film that’s been advertised, am I right? Well, this isn’t so much a horror film as a psychological suspense film about the dangers of creation, both scientific and reproductive, with a healthy dose of psycho-sexual themes thrown in.



There are many parts of this movie I loved, and most of them were in the first two thirds. The suspense was genuine throughout, and at times was almost overcoming. This, in a way, was a more effective horror movie than most that fit the genre conventions. The greatest scares come not from movies that pile on the-

HIGH PITCHED AND DRAMATIC MUSICAL STING!

Woah! Hm, where was I? Oh yeah. True horror does not come from pointless scares and stings, nor does it come from simply watching people get their stomachs torn open for two hours. Horror comes from slowly building tension that leads up to an ultimate breaking point, and while there may be multiple points of breakage, those that come from a slow build hold the greatest impact. Splice understands this well. When Dren is a baby and appears to be no threat, there remains a great caution that surrounds her. The audience can feel where this is heading, and it ain’t good.

In the end the film is not so much about the creature itself as it is about the way the “parents” Clive and Elsa (Brody and Polley respectively) respond to it. It is Elsa who has the first motherly attraction toward the creation, seeing it as the baby she hasn’t had yet. This is one of the several leaps of logic the film takes, as I don’t buy this genetic engineer, who creates living things apparently daily, would feel such a quick need to become a mother to Dren. Not to mention just a couple scenes before she seemed vehemently against the idea of a child.

I have a similar complaint toward Brody’s character, who is the one who actually begins arguing fiercely against keeping Dren, but… let’s just say he changes his mind in that area. And our dear friend Sigmund Freud would be proud. I was not averse to the film exploring these themes, in fact I would welcome it. The film was just not able to work it in smoothly enough, for it came too fast and I never truly bought it. This plotline finally reaches its climax (ahem) in incredibly ridiculous fashion that nearly destroys the entire film to me. I liked the idea of it all, but in the end it got a little too literal with everything.

Finally we reach the end, and I had problems with that as well. It was mostly effective, but it felt tacked on as if the producers wanted a climactic action sequence that kind of clashed with the whole idea of the movie.

What ambition this film has, especially for a horror movie. It works as a cautionary tale against scientific discovery, but also takes on the worst nightmares of every parent and would-be parent. I give the film a huge amount of credit for going for it, but towards the end it misfires badly and falls victim to cliché in the final sequence. It is also so disturbing, and thus in a way unforgettable. I don’t regret seeing it, and I’m not about to forget this film, and I guess that ultimately counts for something. In the end the film would have been best served to tone it down a bit. All in all a flawed piece of work, but something to behold nonetheless. Audiences are not going to respond well to it now, and its box office has not been particularly great thus far, but maybe in a while it will gather a sufficient cult following. It just might deserve it. For now, I’m not so sure.

Rating: (out of 4)