Splice review

What is happening in the cinema world right now is fucking awesome. Despite all the massive, massive amounts of crap being tossed out there and the usual junk food pictures there is people at work attempting to revive the science fiction and horror genres. Some of these people you know like Oscar nominated filmmaker Neil Blomkamp of "District 9" or Duncan Jones of "Moon". However some have been hard at work attempting to bring us smart and original ideas for a while. People like Vincenzo Natali. Natali created "Cube" in the late 90's; a Kafka-like psychological science fiction picture about people trapped in a giant cubic puzzle. After that he somewhat disappeared only really popping up once more on my radar for his directed piecein "Paris Je T'aime" which was among my favorites. All the while he was cracking the story that would eventually become "Splice".

Is it really horror? Not by the conventional thought of stuff jumping out and all that, but instead something very, VERY close to his and executive producer Guillermo Del Toro's feelings on horror, science and monsters. Del Toro is well known for of course the "Hellboy" films and "Pan's Labyrinth" however people tend to forget his bizarre vampire tale "Cronos" (which is getting the Criterion treatment soon), the war ghost story "The Devil's Backbone" or his homage to Universal movie monster favorite "The Mummy", his mega roach monster film "Mimic". Aside from that the man is a fucking Cronenberg junkie and obviously Natali is as well; something very evident here.

What the film is really about is Clive (Adrian Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley), a rock star bioengineering team who have cracked DNA splicing and want to step it up a notch. So they do. From dealing with animal DNA, to tossing in some human DNA and the result is Dren. Clive fears what they've created and often speaks of destroying it however Elsa continuously reminds him of all that they could learn from her and eventually come to possibly love their creation. Dren is genetically a dozen different animals which allows from some fun and mildly tense sequences of discovery involved them dealing with her. But like most mad scientist creations something goes pretty wrong. Dren ages quickly and within a few months she appears to be in her mid twenties. She's tired of being cooped up in basements, labs and barns and wants out and that's the last thing Elsa or Clive want. Also as time progresses more and more is learned about her genetics as well as subtle hints about one of the character's childhood. For me much of what happens near the end of the second act play strongly into the things we are never told about this character's past and family life and why they might act the way they do.

"Splice" then uses it's final act to go for the gut and go out there. Creepily out there with stuff you've definitely not seen in modern horror. My friends we have entered Cronenberg-land. It's a wonderful place full of bizarre, skin crawling things that play more into ideas and morals and less into just straight gore. In fact there isn't much gore in the film at all, but it does warrent it's R-rating. I dare not spoil anything major and really do ask people to give this a shot, especially if you profess to like sci-fi movies or horror movies. Nowadays we mainly get remakes, torture porn or straight forward gore pictures. It's rare to find original, intelligent, disturbing horror pieces that don't need to relay on half-assed tricks to get viewers. Granted A LOT of people will probably not like this film, but that's honestly because they've promoted this to seem very much like a basic horror film and that's what they want to see. Those viewers are the reason we have so many damn "Saw" films in the world. No taste for the truly bizarre and disturbing, just for mindless gore and stupid traps. Let me just say that Cronenberg's "The Brood" is smarter and creepier than any of the "Saw" pictures.

I know I could repeat that last bit over and over again till my fingers bleed, but it's the truth and honestly I know this film won't to be major success. It's too strange for mainstream audiences that want movies like lunch meat. They want simplicity, easy understanding and whatever is the flavor of the month aka funny zombie movies. Being a horror fan it does piss me off to high heavens, but fuck all I can do about it. All I can say is that "Splice" goes to places few horror movies go to anymore and has fun with it. It's not a heavy-handed morality tale of why you shouldn't play God and it's not a brainless monster movie. It's "Frankenstein" mixed with "Cronos" with a scoop of "Dead Ringers".