Splice (2009)

If Species made a sequel with a sort of X-Files romantic vibe and added trace amounts of questionable moral justifications and gray areas filled with inter-species pedophilia and corporate greed all driven by pretty decent CGI, you’d have this little gem.

At this point in our relationship you can tell whether or not I think something is great by my introductory sentence. Sometimes, I try and leave some mystery in there, but not today, folks. Not today. In fact, I am only really going over this film because I noticed that our website hits go up significantly if I review a movie made in the last 5 – 10 years that’s mainstream enough for everyone to have heard of. Does that make me a sell-out? Yes. Do I really care? Yes, a little. But integrity be damned, I need the ego boost from page views. DEAL WITH IT.

As a warning, I am just going to SPOIL the Hell out of this whole movie. There is your ALERT.

Plot: Clive and Elsa are really smart scientists and they work for a company called N.E.R.D. (yes, I am totally serious). They handle all kinds of crazy, futuristic genetic things. Splicing DNA to make weird, worm-y looking things comprised of many different kinds of animal DNA for pharmaceuticals to use and figure out how to cure diseases. –My God, I am just starting this plot synopsis, and already I want to die. How did I even watch this?–

Well, they create these male and female creatures, and they love each other… Which is, like, symbolic of Clive and Elsa’s love. They call the creatures Fred and Ginger. Their bosses are super-stoked about this development, but Elsa wants more! They do some sort of bio-chem wizardry and fertilize an embryo with a spliced double-helix containing tons of random animal DNA and… ELSA’S DNA TOO! OMG. THERE’S THE HOOK! They just want to see if it will “take” and agree to destroy it if it does. Science-y montages happen and then, woah, it’s developing so fast, it pops out of the weird science machine and runs around the room. It looks like a hairless cat if a hairless cat looked like a giant baby chicken (wrap your minds around THAT, internet).

Clive and Elsa discover that it develops outside the womb and Clive wants to kill it. Elsa is super-stoked to have a little one to love and forbids it. They name the creature (a girl) DREN (NERD backwards), and it starts developing rapidly. Like days of growth in mere minutes. Clive wants to kill the thing and one day, DREN gets a fever and they try to put her in ice water. This causes her throat to constrict in on itself, so Clive decides to finish the job and just drown her. BUT LOOK OUT! She can breathe under water. Clive says he knew it all along and Elsa buys it.

Eventually they move her to secluded farm house. She runs out and is about to fall off the top of the barn and suddenly, to her surprise, sprouts wings. Clive loves her now, and tells her, so she doesn’t fly away.

At the big capitalist-pharmaceutical convention, Clive and Elsa show off Fred and Ginger, but Ginger changed sexes and the creatures attack and kill one another. Blah blah blah, boring exposition about synthesizing protein and blah blah blah, Clive has sex with DREN yadda yadda yadda, Elsa catches them in the act. Keep in mind that she may look 18, but she’s like 1 month old at this point. Bunch of ridiculous crap, yadda yadda yadda, they kill DREN, bury her, and then they hear a screech. DREN has evolved again… now SHE is a HE and totally ripped. He rapes Elsa, kills Clive and is killed in turn, by Elsa.

Then Elsa sells her as yet unborn baby to the pharmacy-capitalists and says some stupid something and the movie ends. Good God, thank you.

Tone: This movie tried to do too much. It was mediocre. There was no real tone. It tried to address the ethical ambiguities of playing God and the following consequences, but just totally failed.

Dialogue: Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley are the stars. I actually really liked Sarah in the Dawn of the Dead re-make, but she was really bad in this. Actually, they both were. Now that I think about it, this movie seemed to suffer from The Wolfman-itis. It seemed as though the performances were phoned in.

Violence, Gore, and Effects: There isn’t a lot of violence or gore, this is mostly an effects movie. The different stages of DREN’s development were interesting and done pretty well. Her suddenly sprouting wings was neat as well. Fred and Ginger could have benefited from being better defined, but I understand why they were left looking like giant, flesh-colored maggots. DREN as a dude just looked ridiculous. He was supposed to be big and intimidating, but his face was just laughable.

Ending: Heavily fore-shadowed and ultimately predictable.The last 3 minutes or so are Sarah Polley at her worst. It’s hard admitting that because, like I said, I’ve enjoyed her in other movies.

Final Thoughts: Just watch the Species series. Seriously.

Grade: D The only thing keeping this from an F is that, for the majority of the film, the CGI was really good.

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