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A human-made creature named Dren (Delphine Chaneac) confronts her creator (Sarah Polley) in the thriller “Splice.” |
Right after I saw Vincenzo Natali’s bizarre little science fiction film titled “Splice,” I ran into fellow critic Roger Ebert and told him that after “Mommie Dearest,” this could be the nastiest Mother’s Day movie ever made.
Ebert applauded my cynical observation, perhaps to be polite. But I wasn’t kidding.
“Splice” isn’t your standard creature feature with a Frankenstein-esque creation running amok and knocking off humans, although that element dominates this movie.
“Splice” might be perfectly at home on the Lifetime Channel as a cautionary domestic drama about generational cycles of child abuse. Except, maybe, for the part about creating a new humanoid life-form by genetically splicing together DNA from various animals.
That’s what Elsa and Clive do.
They’re lovers who work as bio-researchers for a company attempting to make profits on patents of spliced entities.
Clive (Adrien Brody) is a serious, by-the-book kind of guy. Elsa (Sarah Polley) tends to be more of a daring risk-taker when great discoveries are on the line.
The two successfully create a pair of genetically spliced life-forms. But that doesn’t go well when the feminine half inexplicably changes sexes and attacks the other male in a bloody spray of violence. (Read more…)