Splice - Review

** out of five stars

Rule 34 states, “if it exists, there’s porn of it.” After catching a preview screening of writer-director Vincenzo Natali’s new sci-fi/horror thriller Splice, I’m positive that a new type of niche internet porn will arise: gene-spliced human-mutant tongue/human porn. Then again, that may already exist.

My girlfriend called it disturbing; I just thought it was silly and pretentious. Splice is the “cautionary tale” of gene-splicing biologists, Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley), who, in their quest to create a cure-all protein for a “evil” pharmaceutical company, create a mutant spliced from animal and human DNA. Of course, their project goes south when their mad scientist tendencies flare and they choose to raise the mutant, named Dren (Delphine Chanéac)—nerd backwards, how cute—as a pet/child. Complications ensue when Dren, who grows at an accelerated rate, matures to roughly age 16 in a matter of weeks and faces a sexual awakening that will make audiences cringe or chuckle. Splice culminates with a disturbingly gruesome and silly denouement that ranks as one of the most ludicrous “now, I’ve seen it all” moments ever.

Splice lives or dies by the audience’s willingness to buy into its premise because beyond that there’s nothing spectacular or clever about this flick. The plot is a stale rehash of the age-old “scientist push boundaries and pay for it” construct, dashed with a bit of moral hand-wringing over the ethical concerns of cloning and “animal” testing. The pacing is atrocious. 90% of Splice is setup, with only the last half-hour registering any active development of character or plot. At least an 75 minutes of the film consists of Brody and Polley’s characters bickering over the “morality” of their experiment then struggling with their twisted parenthood, which would be acceptable if the characters were relatable or intelligent. Where Brody’s Clive is a optimistic, if weak-willed, hipster scientist, Polley’s Elsa is a particularly unlikeable mix of a damaged abuse survivor and smug mad scientist. Despite their advanced education, both lack any semblance of common sense when it comes to raising a human/animal mutant hybrid pet/child like Dren. Dren her/itself becomes a more defined character near the films conclusion, but—due to a lack of language, weird spasms and creepy glares—mostly comes off as more of a creepy, horny pet than anything resembling a human.

Despite the issues with plot, pacing and character, atmosphere in Splice is top notch. The camera filter gives the film a blue-green tint that makes the audience feel like they’re submerged in a deep-sea sensory deprivation tank. Also, the limited cast and empty locales, such as the lab and Elsa’s farm, contribute to a foreboding sense of isolation that enhances the notion of hidden shame running through Splice. In addition to atmosphere, easily the film’s greatest achievement was Dren. As a mix of animal human DNA that is 75% human, 5% rat, 5% scorpion, 5% fish, 5% bat/bird and 5% gargoyle, Dren is suitably creepy and oddly alluring. Dren is designed as a sexy manticore, with enough humanity—of course, in the supple female form a la Species—to somehow seduce but lacking enough to make even the most open mind think twice. If Natali’s goal was to achieve the balance between seductive and unnerving, he succeeded ably with Dren.

If Dren and her “parents” exploits prove less then disturbing then this may be the flick for you. Otherwise, it is an acquired taste that most audiences won’t want to sample. Splice may have a wonderfully speculative, if creepy, moral conundrum at heart, but its stale plot, turgid pacing and distasteful characters will keep audiences at a distance. While it succeeds on atmosphere and “creature” effects, Splice tries to hard to ask questions that have been asked before while trying to creep its audience out. It succeeds more in the latter than the former, because I felt pretty slimy after leaving the theater.