Splice
There is a Jewish proverb that goes, ‘God could not be everywhere so he created mothers’. Vincenzo Natali’s mad-science horror flick Splice is not just a case of man playing God but also a dark look at motherhood.
Natali’s picture stars Sarah Polley far from the hills of Avonlea as Elsa and He Seems To Be in Everything This Year, Adrien Brody as Clive – a pair of scientists and lovers skating the dark side of genetics. Elsa and Clive are mavericks in their field of advanced genetics. Together they splice, dice and reassemble animal DNA into hybrids – think weird Altered States-esque goops of matter. Having pushed the bounds of science further than anyone else, they go that further mile and cook up a human-animal hybrid named Dren. And here’s when the creepometer gets cranked up twelve notches.
Polley’s Elsa is a woman living on the edge. Her fractured relationship with her own mother is magnified and reflected to tragic effect. At odds even with the First Principles of the movie, Natali decides that Nature overrules nurture. Elsa’s protectiveness of Dren grates at times and it’s then Polley sounds tinny to the Nth degree. In these moments, it’s difficult to escape the fact that Splice would be a much more effective horror movie with less exposition on how Elsa is a bad mother and more exploration into how her experiences have warped her world-view and ethics.
In stark contrast to mother figure Elsa, Brody’s Clive feels like an emasculated plot device. God knows Brody tries to carve out a performance, but Polley’s Elsa gives him little room to breathe and he ends up being a sounding board for her fucked up Id.
Natali’s movie asks interesting questions about forbidden sexuality, motherhood and God Complex of modern science in the first half but I can’t help feeling that the film woke up in the last thirty minutes with its socks on and realising it is a creature feature and that requires lots of blood splatty action. By then, Dren has grown up and the movie is fast running out of time and ideas! It’s especially disappointing when you realise Natali wrote and directed Cube and is donning the same hats in the eagerly-awaited adaptation of Gibson’s Neuromancer due next year.
A parting shoutout to adult Dren actress Delphine Chanéac who deftly portrays the hybrid with operatic grace subverting the Frankenmonster norms with aplomb!
Verdict: Not enough blood for horror fans, not enough originality for goatee strokers.
Rating: 
Written & Directed: Vincenzo Natali.
Starring: Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley and Delphine Chanéac
Posted by Alexia
on 11:09 pm. Filed under Film, Latest Column.
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