Tag: David Hewlett

People don’t like Guillermo del Toro like I like Guillermo del Toro. Wanna know how I know? Because I gave Crimson Peak 3 stars. Great film, you should check it out. Decently creepy, and very beautiful.

Unfortunately, we are never going to get the Hellboy 3 he invisioned (now that the reboot is coming), but it seems to me like The Shape of Water is him telling an offshoot Hellboy story without needing Hellboy. Or at least, a prequel about Abe before he joined the B.P.R.D.

And I am a bit annoyed that this review is coming to you so late in the year, well after the wide releases, because I wanted to be in the forefront, waving my del Toro flag around, hoping that my eyes bleed from beautiful awkwardness.

There it is, love at first sight.

Way back a long time ago, long long ago. Let’s say the 1960’s. Yeah, that sounds good. Somewhere in Baltimore, close to DC, lived a mute girl by the name of, Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins). She led a simple life, generally alone in her world. She would wake up late at night, bathe, masturbate, eat, and head to work because she worked as an overnight cleaning lady.

She had a friend, Zelda (Octavia Spencer.) who worked with her and did all the talking for the duo. She also had a neighbor, Giles (Richard Jenkins), an eccentric artist who a lot of strong opinions on everything. But she has no one to love, to really be intimate with, outside of the occasional Giles snuggles.

Well, at work one night, a strange shipment comes in, and their head of security (David Hewlett) says it is their most important thing ever! It comes with its own team of scientists, led by Dr. Robert Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg) and some sort of federal agent, Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon). And sure enough yeah, it is some sort of Creature from the Black Lagoon! Or at least an Amphibian Man
(Doug Jones) from the Amazon Rain forest and rivers where he was worshiped as a god.

Oh fun! A creature that people are afraid of, who is being abused, who also has communication problems and is alone. Well, Elisa seems to have a connection to him. She feels his pain and wants to put him at ease. And when his life is on the line and other countries want him dead as well, she is going to have to put a lot more of herself out there than ever before.

Also starring Morgan Kelly as a below adequate pie flinger.

Michael Shannon desires only above average pie flingers.

At this day and age, it is very hard to give us a sort of “star crossed lovers” story and have it believable. We get it. People can be with anyone at this point. Romance against all odds.

So what about a woman and an amphibian man. Not a man who turned into a fish creature, but you know, some entity that evolved on its own, completely separate from humans, despite being humanoid. See, this is the new stuff that storytellers need to be tackling, the things that the Republicans have been warning us against.

Hawkins gives an astounding performance as our mute lead, and I am surprised there currently is not a giant campaign against her taking actual mute actresses work, or whatever. She does an amazing job, doing so much with those eyes and her smile. Shannon and Stuhlbarg are a bit cartoon-y, but that is okay given what they end up doing. Shannon’s villainness started off slow but really escalated near the end during the climax. I was very scared in the scene with Spencer.

Jenkins continues his eccentric small characters that he has been doing recently, and Spencer is unfortunately playing a role she keeps getting put into. She needs a better agent to showcase her range instead of the same thing over and over.

The film is stunning to look at, the Amphibian Man is detailed in every facet (and orifice). Doug Jones is finally being acknowledged for his astounding work in the creature field. There are so many positive things to say, but really, just see it for yourself for a different experience.

By and by, this is probably the finest piece of interspecies erotic ever written.

I vaguely remember seeing the trailers for Splice many years ago. I remember it looked weird, would probably be a bad science horror, and quickly then forgot about it.

So now, why am I watching Splice? Well, I needed an emergency filler film to review today and I happened to own it.

Why do I own it? Not sure. I probably picked it up when the local Blockbuster closed, probably bought the Blu-Ray for only a $1-2. A price so small that I could put it on my shelf and risk watching it sometime in the future.

And here we are! Roughly 2.5 years after buying it, a review on Splice!

This was originally planned to be an awkward sequel to Jurassic Park, I think.

Science is crazy! It can literally do anything, as long as there is a will and way and some smart people with money backing them.

Which is what is happening at the NERD research group. Dr. Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley) and Dr. Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody) are science partners and real life sexy time partners. They are also making animal hybrids, creating new species. It isn’t a pretty sight, as you can see above. But once they successfully got a weird male species and a weird female species, both that they created, to mate? That is when they felt pretty great.

Clearly the next step is getting some sort of human hybrid too. The possibilities of their research are limitless. It can be used for…well, growing spare body parts I guess. Or other weird gene shit. But guess what?! Their funding is getting shut down by the guys upstairs (Simona Maicanescu, David Hewlett). Da fuq!

Well, as any scientist knows, they just have to show them the results to get the funding back. So, just a test, just to see, they do it anyways. They spliced together human and animal DNA. Then begin a series of steps that lead to the formation of Dren (Delphine Chaneac), an animal human hybrid. Which animal? Eh, just vague assortment of other animal characteristics. Lets get crow a tail, some wings, some tentacle thing, some gills. You know, everything you might need to be a successful hybrid in the world.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

Brandon McGibbon is also in this movie as the brother of Clive and he also is a scientist on their team. Everyone is super close!

But when dealing with Dren, make sure there is enough space for Jesus.

Ah, bad science movies. To be fair, there isn’t a lot of actual science in this movie. To me it felt like someone was coughing during the important moments of a presentation, so the how or why gets kind of lost but the talk keeps going. They don’t even try, is the real point I am making. Zoom in on some beakers, and some pictures of chromosomes, add in some science talk and move on.

Of course, not only is the science depicted badly, but everyone in the movie is a scientist or runs/funds a science lab. All of them are terrible at their jobs too. We assume these people got advanced degrees and they are bumbling around like idiots!

So for the most part, all of that is bad. What about the good?

Well, eventually in the movie, the plot became a bit more interesting when we had the adult form of Dren. A lot more cooler things could be done, including quite a few uncomfortable scenes. I was pleased that this was more of a thriller than a horror film. I remember the trailer basically taking place all in a small lab room, which made it seem like a small cast survival horror and just seemed ridiculous. But they are able to try and flesh out their characters a bit and give some reasoning for their actions. At least a few.

It had some tense moments, and a lot of bad ones, but overall told an okay story. Not one that is really scary in any way, just uncomfortable at times.