“To a new world of gods and monsters…” — Dr. Septimus Pretorius in Bride of Frankenstein

As it happens I was watching a program on the Science Channel last night that detailed scientists’ endeavor to artificially create life.  They did it.  It’s out there.  It’s only bacterial now but technological evolution moves at unimaginable speeds.  In 1987 on Star Trek: The Next Generation, the crew of the enterprise carried around these pads with touch-screen interfaces.  They called it science fiction, now we call them iPads.  Scientists didn’t think they were going to crack the human genome as quickly as they did but it happened.  Who knows where this science of biological engineering will be in ten years?  Or twenty?

About thirteen years ago Canadian director Vincenzo Natali brought us the mind-fuck horror movie Cube and now he turns attention to creating life.  Obviously the technology raised a plethora of ethical questions.  Splice plays oftentimes like someone asked a bioethicist what to do, and then did the exact opposite.  Several times in the movie, the question is asked “what’s the worst that could happen?”  Several times that question is answered.  This is a throwback to the classic mad scientist picture that is greatly reminiscent of the work of bio-horror auteur David Cronenberg.

The film stars Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley as a pair of scientists who decide to play God.  Brody plays Clive (as in Colin Clive, the actor who played Dr. Henry Frankenstein) and Polley plays Elsa (as in Elsa Lanchester, the actress who played the bride of Frankenstein’s monster).  The nomenclature allusions should be enough to indicate how this experiment is going to go.  Clive and Elsa, who are also a couple, have created a new life form by splicing genes from several wildly disparate species.  The creatures produce enzymes that have very lucrative applications towards agribusiness.  The creatures, Fred and Ginger (the name allusions are just “cute” and not plot-relevant [unless Astaire and Rogers had some really weird shit going on behind the scenes]), are grotesque mounds of flesh with an ambiguous orifice that is probably a mouth.  They don’t really do anything scary but they’re deeply unsettling to behold.

Clive and Elsa’s corporate overlords (David Hewlett and Simona Maicanescu) are happy with this progress and want to work on synthesizing Fred and Ginger’s enzyme so they can start showing some profit.  Clive and Elsa are more interested in proceeding to the next stage: the one that could result in cures for genetic diseases like Parkinson’s or Huntington’s.  That stage?  Splicing human DNA into the mix.  The suits don’t go for it, citing the moral outcry that would ensue.  But you can’t keep a good mad scientist down.  So close to achieving their goal they decide to conceive their human-animal crossbreed, citing that human cloning is illegal and this wouldn’t be entirely human.  The plan is to conceive an embryo and then abort.  Just to know they could do it…

Things so rarely go according to plan…  The embryo develops much faster than anticipated until it is “born.”  After some deliberation they decide to kill it until they find out it has changed dramatically and now resembles a small animal (like something between a human and a rodent).  Elsa immediately takes a shine to the little gal and decides to keep her around.  The scientific justification is that with the accelerated aging, she won’t be around for too long anyway and they get a chance to observe her entire life.  They name her Dren.

Dren is played as a newborn by a puppet or CGI or more likely some combination of the two.  The result is simultaneously a hideous grotesquerie and also kind of cute.  Don’t ask how but it is.  As a child she is played by Abigail Chu.  This is when Elsa begins treating her more as a human.  She begins dressing her and gives her some of her old playthings.  She doesn’t speak but is shown to have a high level of comprehension.  As an adolescent she is played by model/actress Delphine Chanéac.  That’s when shit starts getting really weird.  Because from about the knees to her nose, she gets to be pretty nice-looking.  Her legs are all weird, her eyes are too far apart and she only has four fingers per hand… but other than that it’s the body of… well, model/actress Delphine Chanéac.

The plot, or more so the characters, take some much unexpected turns.  We get some insight as to how Elsa’s own fucked-up childhood might be having a rather severe impact on her own style of “motherhood.”  Also Dren develops one hell of an Electra complex.  Clive and Elsa both do some unthinkable things that make you think Dren isn’t really the monster in this movie.  Sarah Polley deserves credit for her portrayal, which turns on a dime from inquisitive to nurturing to terrifying.

I may have already given too much of the plot away but this a film that you should see if you’re into horror movies that are actually horrific.  Not Jason Voorhees jumping out and killing camp counselors with a machete (though I do love those films too) but a genuinely unsettling cinematic experience.  The best comparison is to the earlier work of Canadian director David Cronenberg like The Brood or his remake of the The Fly.  Splice lacks the bizarrely poetic tone of Cronenberg’s films but does achieve the off-putting eroticism of a film like Videodrome (only without the insertion of VHS tapes into bizarre new orifices).  This film really isn’t for everyone.  Definitely not for the faint of heart (or stomach).  The casual horror fan who prefers to jump in their seat as opposed to confront some very unnerving issues of bioethics probably won’t go for it either.  There really were next to no “jump” moments.  That’s not the level this movie is looking to scare you on.  It’s going for something deeper.  And it achieves it.

So… two articles in one day.  If enough quality films come out this summer (and they keep the midnight screenings coming) I might make a thing of it.  I needed to get out of the house anyway.  I’ve been holed up playing Red Dead Redemption for the better part of a week (side note: that game is fucking awesome).  I should be back next with another article (or two!) so see you then…