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.