Splice

Directed By: Vincenzo Natali

Screenplay By: Vincenzo Natali, Antoinette Terry Bryant, and Doug Taylor

Starring: Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley, Delphine Chaneac, and Abigail Chu

Director of Photography: Tetsuo Nagata, Editor: Michele Conroy, Production Designer: Todd Chernaiwsky, Original Music: Cyrille Aufort

Rated: R for disturbing elements including strong sexuality, nudity, sci-fi violence and language.

    Confession: I rarely see horror films. While the genre started as a director’s paradise where new artists could be free to experiment as long as they provided enough gore to frighten their audiences, letting their cameras run wild, most of fallen more wayward, choosing to focus on gore and blood instead of letting the camera do the work for them. That’s why I was nervous going into Splice, a horror flick about a genetic create gone awry. But Splice may be the first movie with a monster that rarely qualifies as a monster movie. With allusions to not only classic monster movies like Bride of Frankenstein (our protagonists are named Clive and Elsa) but also the Cronenberg school of the curiosity of the grotesque, Splice is always imaginative in its ideas and often a joy to watch.

    The director, Vincenzo Natali (best known for the cult classic Cube), has chosen to throw a lot of ideas into his film, never diving in too deeply, but just skimming near the surface to give us something to chew on. Adrien Brody (Clive) and Sarah Polley (Elsa), both giving strong performances to keep us invested, play a pair of top scientists in love who deal with genetic splicing. Their latest creations, a pair of blob like creatures, appropriately named Fred and Ginger, has been the key to a new set of pharmaceutical breakthroughs. But Clive and Elsa want to go further—they want to experiment with human DNA, which in a horror film, is always a big no-no.

    Their creation—a humanoid anomaly they name Dren, starts off as a freak, but soon becomes a child worth caring for. Her mind grows and body grows even faster and Clive and Elsa need to deal with the ethical consequences of not taking care of a specimen, but one of their own. Rules are broken, and as Dren quickly ages from creature to full-grown teenager, Clive and Elsa stop playing scientist and start playing Mom and Dad.

    Splice works in mysterious ways because it is less interested in a creature-on-the-loose narrative and more with a coming-of-age tale from a strange and wicked perspective. The film begins with the birth of another creature, and Mr. Natali puts us in its perspective. The trick shot works because we often feel less connected to Mr. Brody and Ms. Polley, and often more to Dren. Her story is often the most human in the narrative.

    Splice, a hit film at Sundance that Warner Bros. smartly picked up for a hopefully successful summer release, plays with our expectations, giving us questions dealing with scientific ethics, abortion, cloning, and genetic engineering, but in a way that always has us wondering what is going to happen next. As the film reaches its third act finale, which strangely jumps into some Freudian territory that leaves us more baffled than enthralled, the film starts relying on its genre expectations. However, by that time, its earned its thrills, because Splice, for all its absurdity, gives us a little more to chew on than your average scare tactics.