Box Office Review - Splice

Splice is a movie about a stupid decision that leads to some very stupid actions. The movie itself is very intelligent, and it is amazing that this film got a wide release. Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley play Clive and Elsa, a couple. They are both cocky rock star generic engineers who have found a sort of celebrity after splicing animal DNA and creating a new species. In order to advance their science experiment Clive and Elsa secretly splice human DNA with their new creations and Voilà! They create an entirely new humanoid species. Think of this movie as a kind of modern day science based Frankenstein. The creature Clive and Elsa have created has a look that only a mother could love. It grows fast and soon an new plan must be developed to keep its existence a secret.

I found myself squirming in my seat a few times during this movie. The creature looks very disturbing. At firsts it is in a sort of pod that looks like the huge maggot from Cronenberg's The Fly. It then grows into a little creature without any human characteristics. From then on the creature named Dren starts to develop human characteristics. The horror comes from never being sure what this creature will do. It has a massive stinger on its tale and uses it liberally. It also has human emotions so it begins to develop an attachment to Clive and Elsa. The special effects used to create Dren are great. Its legs, which can be seen in the poster, are very weird looking and the way it moves does a lot towards creating a strange creature.

The main faults in the movie come from the story. I found the movie to be a bit predictable. I wasn't shocked by any of the revelations throughout the movie, including the few big ones near the end. Also most of these twists just happened without much explanation. The movie does follow a classic story model so while some of the obvious stuff did bug me, for genre fans this won't be a problem.

It is nice to see a movie like this get a wide release and more studios need to take risks like this. Unfortunately it is easy to talk about taking risks, but actually taking them is a different story. A movie like Splice is much to inaccessible for a general audience. I think if people give the movie a chance they will find a rewarding experience.

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