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Splice Movie Review

Splice is a 2010 science fiction horror film directed by Vincenzo Natali and starring Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley. It’s a crazy and sick, but highly engaging and clever genre flick.

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“If you could understand crazy,

it wouldn’t be crazy“

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It follows the experiments in genetic engineering being done by a young scientific couple, who attempt to introduce human DNA into their work of splicing animal genes. Naturally, this story is as old as time, but getting increasingly relevant due to current experiments in this particular area done in the real world. I wouldn’t call this film truly sophisticated, but it does explore its themes quite solidly.

The dangers of such experiments are very well emphasized, but I also hugely appreciated the film’s ending for its darkness. It was brutal, but very much grounded in reality unfortunately. The animal experiments themselves were quite intriguing, but of course the star show here is the creature herself/himself.

Yes, the changing of the sex was very memorable, but so were the creature’s wings, lungs, gills and tail. It is basically the combination of a rat, human, frog, fish and bird at the same time, and although clearly that was overly ridiculous and just too much, it did provide the movie with some unforgettable action/horror scenes and some fun, cool imagery.

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The creature should have been better developed, there is no question about it. Dren is highly memorable, but still not enough emotion was given to her nor did she gain any true progression as a character. However, Clive and Elsa are nothing of the sort. These two were simply stupendously developed for a horror flick such as this one and both the performance from Adrien Brody and especially Sarah Polley were terrific.

The film portrays so well how problematic can a relationship where the woman is so clearly the dominant figure be. Clive is so submissive that his weakness led to the entire experimentation going awry or even starting to begin with. As for Elsa, she is such a major bitch that it is very easy to hate her, especially as the movie goes on. She became worse and worse. Her maternal instincts were well explored, but overall she is a horrible human being and the film showed so well how morally questionable some scientists can be and how stakes are much higher in their regard.

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Splice has very strong VFX. The creature looks excellent. Though silly of course, it was fascinating following its every move. The cinematography and direction are just solid, but the score can be a bit annoying. My main issue with the movie has to be its perverse nature. The double creature sex scene was simply overly dark and gruesome with the film becoming needlessly insane in those moments, although it did lead to a very interesting ending.