Directed by Vincenzo Natali
Written by Vincenzo Natali, Antoinette Terry Bryant, Doug Taylor
Starring Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley, Delphine Chaneac, David Hewlett
Rated R for violence, profanity, nudity, sexual scenes
Rating - 3 bullet holes
Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) are scientists working on a hybrid animal gene with the goal of creating a protein that could have significant medical benefits. At least that’s the goal of their corporate bosses. Clive and Elsa want to push even further and do more extensive testing with human DNA. They reach a point of success but Elsa isn’t satisifed. Clive bitches and moans and halfheartedly goes along with her since, of course, they are romantically involved. By the time he decides to finally man up and put his foot down, they have created a human animal hybrid creature that they call Dren for a stupid reason I won’t go into but that you can probably figure out.
Dren begins to grow rapidly from an infant to young girl to young woman. She has surprising cognitive skills but can’t speak. She communicates via Scrabble letters and weird squirrel-like chirps. She moves like a lizard with swift twitches of the head and the ability to scramble up walls and across ceilings. This…squizzard also has a tail with a retractable barb ideal for killing prey. A real problem child.
Vincenzo Natali is most known for 1997’s sci-fi horror film Cube, a pretty effective film about seven strangers who wake up in a giant cube with multiple rooms and have to navigate a maze of death traps. It seemed apparent from that film that Natali had a command for the camera and could effectively create scenes of dread. But Splice is a huge misfire. There are virtually no scary moments. Sure there are moments that are intended to evoke terror, but for me they never did.
The film starts out with promise as it, once again, raises the Frankensteinian themes of tampering with nature, illusions of creation, and the depths of depravity that can be reached when those illusions unravel. But, they are handled so sloppily as the film progresses that I couldn’t buy into the story. There are subpar special effects for Dren that make her appear comical, there is bad dialogue, and there are so many scenes of what I consider to be the cardinal sin in storytelling - having characters perform unrealistic and ridiculous actions for no reason but to move the plot in a particular direction. For example, when Clive and Elsa have to move Dren to a more secretive location, they put her in a large cardboard box and cart her through the laboratory while constantly shushing her as she makes her squizzard chirps. Why the hell don’t you just sedate her?
As the film progresses, it gets more and more ludicrous and thoroughly unpleasant. Clive and Elsa continue to say and do inane things. Their world is clearly unraveling, and they continue to make stupid decisions. Earlier in the film, Dren witnesses her creators having sex. Towards the end, her curiosity about sex leads to a scene that I found disturbing while the other moviegoers around me laughed.
As I left the theater, I realized something. Since Frankenstein, just about every movie that revolves around gene tampering follows the same playbook and always has the same outcome. I had hoped for something different from Splice, but the muses of ingenuity had undoubtedly never visited this project.
Sometimes interesting. Often infuriating. Never compelling.
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