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Splice - Delphine Chanéac and Adrien Brody. Copyright(c) Warner Bros. Pictures. |
Technology has gotten more advanced since Dr. Frankenstein put an abnormal brain in a corpse to create artificial life. The new Splice is a much more modern tale, but the lesson is the same: don’t play God. Bad things will happen.
But before we get too bogged down in morality, what really has to be said about Splice is: it’s a lot of sick fun.
Two geneticists played by Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley. Clive and Elsa (their names must be homages to Frankenstein actors Colin Clive and Elsa Lanchester) have come up with a method to splice DNA from several animal species to create an entirely new life form. It’s one that can be studied, analyzed and extracted from – and they hope create some medical breakthroughs. The pharmaceutical company paying their bills likes it, but isn’t ready to go public with what they’ve got.
Clive and Elsa are also a couple at a crossroads. He wants kids; she doesn’t. It seems there work is all they’ve got.
Everything gets a lot more complicated on the work and home fronts when Elsa slips human DNA into the mix and creates yet another life form – a part-human hybrid they name “Dren.” Dren creates all kinds of ethical issues, even as it (or she if you prefer) becomes something of a pet and even part of the Clive-Elsa family.
Dren is also gross. She’s like nothing you’ve seen before – when we first see her, she’s like a fetus growing outside the womb. We squirm in our seats as she walks around, opens her eyes, grows limbs and makes her first sounds. That never changes as she continues to evolve into something more.
And she does evolve – each time creating new dilemmas for Clive and Elsa. The threesome’s story takes some bizarre turns that you couldn’t predict when Dren first comes out of her artificial womb – and they are twists that will make you squirm even more than you first did.
Director Vincenzo Natali has crafted a nice little horror movie for the times, even though it’s an update of such a classic tale. While Dren is no small special effect, it’s a “little” feeling movie because it’s mostly self-contained to this twisted nuclear family. It’s not that long, and if the special effects could be done live, it could even be a stage play. There are no villagers with torches coming after our new Frankenstein monster, but we know they’re out there. There will be times you’re sympathetic to Dren, even if you’re spooked by her appearance. And you wonder what would happen to her if the society out there knew about her. The villagers are the global village that wouldn’t understand and would lash out at her for moral, spiritual, scientific, financial or even bigoted reasons.
You’ll admire this story, even as you think only an abnormal brain could have come up with this.