Splice (2009) Review

Splice (2009) Review

Splice is about two biochemists, Clive and Elsa (Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley) who mix animal DNA together to make hybrids. They hope to create something that will help cure diseases in people, but the work is tricky. They successfully make two worm-like creatures, nicknamed Ginger and Fred, then move on to phase two: a human-animal hybrid. The result is a creature they come to call Dren, which must be kept secret from their employers, because it’s illegal, but Dren matures much faster than they anticipate. She creates a divide between the two scientists , and drives them to their breaking points.

This movie is seriously weird, but finds an effective balance of making its weirdness intriguing without going too far. There’s no bullshitting around, it gets right down to business and moves along at a nice clip, while still allowing for some surprisingly good character development along the way. Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley are both good in their roles, though I think Polley is a little better, and their interactions with the creatures are all completely believable. The creature, Dren, is highly unpredictable, given her completely unique genetic makeup, which makes her pretty original. The first part of the movie is spent almost entirely in a lab, and just when this setting starts to get stale, they move Dren to a nearby farm.

These two characters are like 21^st century Frankenstein’s. They defile the rules other scientists follow, create a creature that doesn’t know why it’s alive, and try to hide it from others while learning about it and caring for it. Dren is made to be a fairly sympathetic creature, but her design is just outside the realm of sympathy, for me. Her eyes are spaced wide apart, her legs are like a horse's mixed with a frog mixed with a rat, and she has a spike-tipped tail. Elsa treats Dren like her own child, but Clive wanted to have a baby with Elsa the old fashioned way, which she was opposed to. There’s definitely an interesting (and twisted) theme of parenthood and creation threaded throughout the story.

The weirdness of Splice is multifaceted. There’s the design of Dren, the gloomy cinematography, the somewhat quirky characters, and the strange relationships between Dren, Clive, and Elsa. In what is undoubtedly the weirdest scene of the whole movie, Dren seduces Clive, somehow, and he has sex with her, then Elsa comes in and catches them in the act! It sounds bizarre, but how it sounds is only secondary to actually seeing it happen.     

While it is a very strange and entertaining movie, Splice isn’t particularly exceptional. The cgi effects are not top notch by any means, the characters often make idiotic decisions, many concepts are derivative of other better sci-fi films, and it sort of devolves into standard monster movie conventions toward the end. In spite of all that, it takes what could have been a fairly generic premise and spins it in a unique way that makes it worth checking out, especially if off-kilter-sci-fi horror is your thing.