Splice

(2010)

Directed by

Vincenzo Natali

Review by Zach Saltz

Posted - 6/26/10

The trailers for Splice make it look like a tired retread of Alien or Jurassic Park.  It’s what the legendary Hollywood creativity killer Robert McKee would call a “Monster in the Closet” story – mysterious creature gets uncovered by foolishly naïve scientists, subsequently escapes, and proceeds to reek havoc through surprise attacks and sudden string jolts in the musical score.  And while Splice occasionally falls victim to this formula, there are a few noteworthy deviations that render the film slightly more intriguing, memorable, and provocative than the average entry in the “creature feature” genre.

The film stars Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley as Clive and Elsa, two genetic engineers who spend their time in the lab mutating the genes of various animal species to form benign worm-like creatures with an elaborate, pretty mating ritual.  I liked Clive and Elsa more than the typical impossibly good-looking scientists for a few reasons.  First, there’s no irritating sexual tension between them because Splice makes no bones about them already being lovers.  Second, there’s no danger in them losing funding (the classic initial dramatic thrust in movies about good-looking, horny scientists), even though there is an unnecessary subplot about their research being moved into “Phase Two” (the profit-making phase – OK, the movie can’t entirely escape from cliché central).  Finally, in Clive and Elsa, we have two of modern cinema’s first hipster scientists.  Clad in leather jackets, funny tee-shirts that Michael Cera would wear, and with a beatbox pounding in the lab (and sleeping in a bed beneath a giant framed anime poster), this duo puts the grunge-tastic crew from Hackers to shame.

Elsa’s biological clock has been ticking for a while, and one night as an act of maternal sabotage, incorporates her own DNA into the genetic mix, and a half-human, half-amphibious, half-whatever baby-creature is born.  It’s a nasty little thing at first, hopping around the lab with no arms, like a CGI fuzzy baby kangaroo.  But soon, the creature (whom Elsa dubs Dren – “Nerd” backwards) begins to exhibit human features – both in its appearance (it doesn’t help that Elsa sticks a dress on it and hands it a Barbie doll) and its intelligence.  We see the requisite dilemmas – how to keep the creature a secret, what it likes to eat, etc.

This is all good and fun, I suppose, but not particularly interesting or unique (spoilers herein).  Where Splice finally transcends from Boris Karloff to David Cronenberg is when Dren develops a sexual appetite for Clive (not particularly surprising given the eventual breakdown of the mother-daughter relationship; Elsa does her best Mo’Nique impersonation from Precious by locking Dren in a barn and cutting off her tail).  Clive and Dren are soon dancing it up in the barn, and he finds her large, alien-like beady eyes irresistible.

Is the movie a complete success?  No.  The screenplay, by director Vincenzo Natali and Antoinette Terry Bryant, is at first too discreet about the torrid sexuality that will eventually play out.  The characters are too feeble-minded to ask basic questions of the creature’s desire to reproduce.  As dirty-minded viewers who have seen Species one too many times, we are not.  And when the shit finally hits the fan and Brody and the creature go at it (in the most wonderfully preposterous sex scene since Watchmen), Natali stupifyingly abandons the provocations of inter-species eroticism in favor of a timidly conservative dramatic foil (Dren simply looks too much like Elsa for Brody to resist).  This is the second movie this year, after Atom Egoyan’s Chloe, to dare to ask questions about deviant sex, but ultimately fail to follow through, perhaps to ensure commercial viability among mainstream American audiences.  Worst of all, these tensions only surface for about twenty minutes toward the end of the picture.  Why not cut out the whole E.T. “let’s-care-for-the-creature-by-feeding-it” crap and develop some serious insights into this material?

Indeed, the messages of Splice are downright fundamentalist by the end of the picture – the transgressions of the brave new world of genetic engineering are the fault of woman, and they are the ones left to bear the brunt of an impure patriarchal line.  The film is worth seeing because the characters are likable and the story occasionally weaves itself in unexpected directions, but the viewer is left with more questions about how much further the story could have been taken than definitive answers about why genetic engineering may be a bad idea.

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