Summary: Two biochemists, Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, secretly create a hybrid creature using DNA from a variety of animals including humans, but…. AT WHAT COST?!
SPOILERS
In previous C Word reviews I have talked a lot about how Japanese movies are crazy. But what you may not realize, and what I have not really discussed previously, is that Canadian movies are fucking weird too. Not in the same ways – they tend not to be hyperviolent, although they do not shy away from violence – but they tend to deal with very dark and strange themes and often use very dry, black humour. And Splice, although people are not talking about it as a Canadian film, is very Canadian. What you would expect to be (and was advertised as) a cool monster movie along the lines of Alien or Species if they were created by the Jurassic Park scientists, turns out instead to be something altogether darker, weirder, more interesting and definitely more daring.
Pissed off that they have lost the main funding for their lab, our two biochemist protagonists (they are actually molecular biologists, but I don’t think the writers know the difference and let’s not start splitting hairs) decide to go ahead and splice some human DNA into the chromosomes they have already made for some weird slug things, just to prove to themselves that it can be done. And of course, in the grand cinematic/literary/biblical tradition, Clive (Brody) is not really comfortable with all of this but is pushed to go through with it anyway by Eve… er, I mean Elsa (Polley). If there is one thing I have learned from fictional stories it is that if a woman ever tries to convince you to do something you are not sure about, run the fuck away! Why won’t women stop destroying good men by tangling them up in their evil machinations? Jeez. Needless to say, things don’t go as planned.
Up to this point the movie is pretty much what you expect it to be: ethically deprived scientists playing god and unleashing something they don’t understand upon the world. Now people are going to die, right? Nope. Clive wants to kill the little monster they have created, but Elsa’s motherly instincts kick in and she once again talks him out of doing what he knows is right. And then the entire second act is devoted to them raising the creature (Dren) as, essentially, their child whom they need to hide from the rest of the world.
At this point the movie is largely about the perils of parenthood (it’s too perilous!) and the inevitability of becoming like your own parents. Not what you expect from a movie billed as a horror. Of course during all of this the filmmakers continue to toy with the idea of where the line between human and animal/monster: Dren cannot form words, only animalistic growls and squeals, but she has learned to spell and can communicate using Scrabble tiles. She has a human torso and face (sort of) but no body hair, bird legs and a tail with a venomous barb. Most of all, she progresses (albeit rapidly) in the same developmental steps as a human. The creature design is phenomenal and shows these steps distinctly and believably, helped by an excellent mix of practical and CGI effects. In fact, for a movie that only cost about $26 million, it is more convincing than a lot of big budget movies. Delphine Chenéac, who plays Dren, is particularly impressive and does a great job of conveying Dren’s humanity and monstrosity (for lack of a better word) and switching back and forth between the two without it feeling jarring. Natali has said that one of his goals in making this film was to create something believable and I think he succeeded admirably (well the science is crap, but it is science fiction so you have to suspend some disbelief).
But this blurred line is also where the movie will catch you off guard. As I said above, Canadian movies like to take a familiar idea and go in a new direction, and in my Pontypool review I mentioned that this usually involves snow. What I have not mentioned yet is the Canadian cinematic penchant for uncomfortable sex scenes (for an excellent overview read the book, or watch the documentary, Weird Sex and Snowshoes). And on this front Splice delivers. As Dren ages she inevitably hits “teenage years” and what do teens want to do? Natali takes a good 20 minutes to build up to it and drops many hints that it will happen but I doubt many people, especially those unfamiliar with stereotypically Canadian movies, expected them to go there. So when Clive and Dren inevitably have sex we were all taken a little by surprise. It is not often I have seen a sex scene this awkward to watch (Kissed comes to mind: Molly Parker plays a necrophiliac and there is at least one graphic sex scene with a corpse. Is it Canadian too, you ask? Why yes it is) and this one is wrong on a number of levels. 1) The first is obviously that she is not human. Lovely human breasts do not make up for the reptilian wings that pop out of her back and arms when she climaxes. Yeah. 2) She is essentially Clive’s daughter. Yes, she does not have his DNA, but he has played the father figure in her upbringing. 3) This one is debatable because it can also be argued as part of the reason he sleeps with her, but her human DNA is from Elsa. Depending on how you look at it this could make her seem more like his wife or even more like his daughter. Either way it is super creepy.
Up to this point the movie is pretty much what you expect it to be: ethically deprived scientists playing god and unleashing something they don’t understand upon the world. Now people are going to die, right? Nope. Clive wants to kill the little monster they have created, but Elsa’s motherly instincts kick in and she once again talks him out of doing what he knows is right. And then the entire second act is devoted to them raising the creature (Dren) as, essentially, their child whom they need to hide from the rest of the world.
At this point the movie is largely about the perils of parenthood (it’s too perilous!) and the inevitability of becoming like your own parents. Not what you expect from a movie billed as a horror. Of course during all of this the filmmakers continue to toy with the idea of where the line between human and animal/monster: Dren cannot form words, only animalistic growls and squeals, but she has learned to spell and can communicate using Scrabble tiles. She has a human torso and face (sort of) but no body hair, bird legs and a tail with a venomous barb. Most of all, she progresses (albeit rapidly) in the same developmental steps as a human. The creature design is phenomenal and shows these steps distinctly and believably, helped by an excellent mix of practical and CGI effects. In fact, for a movie that only cost about $26 million, it is more convincing than a lot of big budget movies. Delphine Chenéac, who plays Dren, is particularly impressive and does a great job of conveying Dren’s humanity and monstrosity (for lack of a better word) and switching back and forth between the two without it feeling jarring. Natali has said that one of his goals in making this film was to create something believable and I think he succeeded admirably (well the science is crap, but it is science fiction so you have to suspend some disbelief).
But this blurred line is also where the movie will catch you off guard. As I said above, Canadian movies like to take a familiar idea and go in a new direction, and in my Pontypool review I mentioned that this usually involves snow. What I have not mentioned yet is the Canadian cinematic penchant for uncomfortable sex scenes (for an excellent overview read the book, or watch the documentary, Weird Sex and Snowshoes). And on this front Splice delivers. As Dren ages she inevitably hits “teenage years” and what do teens want to do? Natali takes a good 20 minutes to build up to it and drops many hints that it will happen but I doubt many people, especially those unfamiliar with stereotypically Canadian movies, expected them to go there. So when Clive and Dren inevitably have sex we were all taken a little by surprise. It is not often I have seen a sex scene this awkward to watch (Kissed comes to mind: Molly Parker plays a necrophiliac and there is at least one graphic sex scene with a corpse. Is it Canadian too, you ask? Why yes it is) and this one is wrong on a number of levels. 1) The first is obviously that she is not human. Lovely human breasts do not make up for the reptilian wings that pop out of her back and arms when she climaxes. Yeah. 2) She is essentially Clive’s daughter. Yes, she does not have his DNA, but he has played the father figure in her upbringing. 3) This one is debatable because it can also be argued as part of the reason he sleeps with her, but her human DNA is from Elsa. Depending on how you look at it this could make her seem more like his wife or even more like his daughter. Either way it is super creepy.
The third act plays out more like the movie everyone expected to see. People discover what they have done and show up at the farm where she is being hidden. Unfortunately she has just died (accelerated aging, remember) and they buried her out back. All’s well that ends well. But no! She has just changed sexes and is now a male monster! So Dren systematically attacks Elsa, Clive, his brother and their boss. Act 3 climaxes with male-Dren raping Elsa (another thing I saw coming but still wasn’t quite prepared for) and killing Clive. By this point the audience is pretty much just thinking WTF? and the rest of the movie doesn’t really matter.
So what do I think overall? Well, I really liked the exploration of what makes a human and how we project our own humanity on to other animals, especially pets. I also thought the stuff about parenting was interesting, although I felt the plot tended to drag a bit in the second act. I’ve come across a lot of complaints that the movie fell apart in the third act and seemed rushed and untrue to the vibe of the movie, and while I understand what they are saying I think it was a pretty good payoff to the suspense that is built through the entire movie.
I do have some issues, however. The plot really did drag at times and there were a couple characters, like Clive’s brother, who should either have not been there or should have been more fleshed out. There is also a whole subplot of Elsa’s history with her crazy mother who kept her locked in a room that ties in to the parenting themes but in the end doesn’t really go anywhere and just falls flat. I also think Natali should have explored the ethics of this beyond simply “unchecked science can be hazardous to your health”. How would the rest of the scientific community, let alone the populace, react to this sort of research? What effect would this technology have on society? He touches briefly on the larger ethics of this type of research but is content to let it sit in the background. This certainly works for the movie he made because Dren would have to escape or be made public somehow, but maybe because I am a scientist, I think the larger ethics are more interesting than what we got. After all, this leaves you with nothing more than we got from Jurassic Park, and that was a hell of a lot more fun.
So what do I think overall? Well, I really liked the exploration of what makes a human and how we project our own humanity on to other animals, especially pets. I also thought the stuff about parenting was interesting, although I felt the plot tended to drag a bit in the second act. I’ve come across a lot of complaints that the movie fell apart in the third act and seemed rushed and untrue to the vibe of the movie, and while I understand what they are saying I think it was a pretty good payoff to the suspense that is built through the entire movie.
I do have some issues, however. The plot really did drag at times and there were a couple characters, like Clive’s brother, who should either have not been there or should have been more fleshed out. There is also a whole subplot of Elsa’s history with her crazy mother who kept her locked in a room that ties in to the parenting themes but in the end doesn’t really go anywhere and just falls flat. I also think Natali should have explored the ethics of this beyond simply “unchecked science can be hazardous to your health”. How would the rest of the scientific community, let alone the populace, react to this sort of research? What effect would this technology have on society? He touches briefly on the larger ethics of this type of research but is content to let it sit in the background. This certainly works for the movie he made because Dren would have to escape or be made public somehow, but maybe because I am a scientist, I think the larger ethics are more interesting than what we got. After all, this leaves you with nothing more than we got from Jurassic Park, and that was a hell of a lot more fun.
B-
originally posted June 23, 2010
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