‘Splice.’ Directed by Vincenzo Natalia.
Written by: Vincenzo Natali, Doug Taylor, and Antoinette Terry Bryant.
Year: 2009.
Studio: Copperheart Entertainment.
Run Time: 104 Minutes.
Country: French Canada (the only Canada).
Budget: $26 Million.
Gross Revenue: $25, 666, 735.
You need to see this movie. Now. No, stop reading, put down that cup of expensive coffee, log out of Facebook and go and get this movie. Pay for it as well; don’t just download it off the net. It hasn’t even broken even yet and if we want more good film makers to make more good movies we have to (sigh) vote with our dollar. Why should you see this movie? Because it’s the best science-fiction movie of the last ten years. Better than District 9? I hear you ask. Yes. It’s better than District 9.
So what’s all the fuss about? Well, Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley play a romantically involved couple of biochemists, Clive and Elsa, who are on the forefront of biotechnology research. They have just designed a hybrid of many different animals, which the pharmaceutical company N.E.R.D (a bit obvious, I know) hopes to harvest various important organic molecules for the betterment of mankind. What Clive and Elsa really want to do however, is create a hybrid with human D.N.A, so that they can harvest molecules that might help humans by curing many life threatening diseases. Of course, the company won’t let them, fearing a public backlash from the anti-cloning brigade. Clive and Elsa, being the wizards that they are, decide to go against company policy and create a hybrid with human DNA, bringing it to full term despite Clive’s reluctance to do so.
What follows is one of the weirdest, most wonderful science fiction films that I’ve ever seen. The creature in this movie, known as ‘Dren’, is so bizarre that you’ll probably feel dirty just looking at it. It is a humanoid, but looks so inhuman at the same time that your brain just can’t handle it. Prepare to feel nauseous more than once in this one.
Aside from stunning visual effects (this is really a movie that could only have been made in the CGI age), Splice really shines in the story department. It’s not just a simple creature feature, nor is it a clichéd morality tale about the ‘evils of science.’ It raises the kinds of questions that I’ve always thought science fiction movies should raise. The trouble in this movie is caused by human emotional frailty, experienced by the protagonists, as opposed to the fact that they are dabbling with ‘God’s Design,’ which is surely a dreadful sci-fi cliche by now. Elsa and Clive are complicated (and somewhat unlikeable) characters that achieve their own satisfying arcs.
Indeed Dren is the only truly innocent character of the whole show. What I thought would quickly deteriorate into a science fiction horror flick (ala Alien), is actually a morbid sort of coming-of-age story about an organism that is the only one of its kind. In this sense, the movie is as much about loneliness as anything else. Think a modern version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with a fresh new injection of contemporary ethics. There are a few niggles in terms of wasted potential at the end of the picture, but it doesn’t matter because Splice is so new and refreshing that the third act could have been that it was all a dream and it still would have been great. Actually no, that would of sucked.
Four and a half stars:
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