Every time I tell someone "I went and saw Splice" the first thing they ask is "DOES SOMEONE FUCK THE CREATURE" so I'm just going to get that out of the way right now - yes. Spoilers after the Overview.
OVERVIEW
Splice stars Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley and is a story about two scientists doing genetic research for a pharmaceutical company. They successfully create a hybrid creature made of human and animal DNA; what follows are their attempts to deal with the consequences of their decision as the monster rapidly develops.
While this movie never fully devolves into fiasco territory, it does skirt greatness for a number of reasons. Character behaviors are erratic and odd at times. Critics have commented on its "black comedy" and while there are some genuinely dark, funny moments a lot of the laughs for me were incidents of unintentional hilariousness. Was the audience laughing because what we were seeing was so ridiculous or because we were uncomfortable? Even now it is sort of hard for me to say. I was never frightened or surprised by anything I saw - by the end of the movie it had become an exercise in waiting for the dominoes to fall.
Brody and Polley do a fine enough job with the material and Delphine Chanéac as Dren is lovely and menacing, by turns innocent, vulnerable and sexy. It will make for a good weekend renter some rainy night when you have nothing better to do.
REVIEW
Ah, to be young and in love and also a mad scientist. Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley work at a lab which has been purchased by a pharmaceutical company. They are flush with the success of their most recent project: the birth of disgusting creatures which resemble gross, writhing penises. There are two, a male and a female (Fred and Ginger). These creatures are hybrids made from the genes of multiple animals and will apparently allow the pharmaceutical company to test drugs and do all sorts of interesting research. They are also hoping to use samples of their tissue to isolate a protein which the company will then patent and make huge stacks of money with. But wait! Adrian and Sarah have developed a new splicing technique, which they believe will enable them to utilize human DNA in their experiments. They'd like to try it so that we can commence with curing Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. The pharmaceutical company balks and tells them no, just focus on the protein, please. This is not interesting enough for Adrian and Sarah who troop back to the lab and create a human/animal hybrid gene sequence. Sarah wants to squirt it into an egg. Adrian bites his fingernails and looks pensive but they go ahead anyway. Sarah assures him they will abort it once they know for sure they can produce a viable fetus. The audience knows she is full of shit. This is a process that will repeat itself over and over again for the course of the film.
Of course the fetus develops and gushes into the world on a wave of synthetic amniotic fluid after stinging the shit of of Sarah's arm and almost killing her. This means that they know the creature is deadly while it is still tiny and adorable and made of CGI and puppets. Adrian is reasonable and wants to kill it. Sarah disapproves and points out that it is developing rapidly, that they have the unique opportunity to observe its entire life cycle. Her logic is that since it will be dead soon anyway they might as well let it live and Do Science To It. They keep it in the splicing lab, where apparently no one needs to go now since everyone is busily working on isolating the protein. Everyone except for Adrian and Sarah. Doesn't anyone wonder where they are all day long? And isn't the idea that hopefully sometime soon the lab will begin work on developing live hybrids again? How do they intend to explain the giant robot womb being destroyed? Who knows!
Eventually the creature gets larger and is played by a little girl in a cute blue dress. She is discovered by Adrian's brother, who also works at the lab. He is appropriately horrified but takes no action other than to berate Adrian for caving to Sarah which is apparently a pattern of behavior for him. (By the way, seriously? Your brother breaks the laws of man and nature and you bitch about his marriage?) They move the creature - which they name Dren - to the basement. At one point she gets sick and while she is in a cold bath to bring down her fever Adrian Brody tries to drown her. They discover she has a second set of amphibious lungs. This is a setup so that the fully mature Dren can swim naked in murky water later on.
In the meantime the lab puts on a presentation for shareholders featuring Fred and Ginger. Something goes horribly wrong and they attack each other, eventually ending up as piles of bloody, hybridized pulp and meat. The pharmaceutical company does not approve of this and approves even less when they discover the cause behind the attack: Ginger turned into a male and no one noticed. Having the males caged together did not go well.
The only hope to keep the lab open at this point is to isolate the protein and sell the hell out of it but Adrian and Sarah are too busy with Dren to bother. She is now nearly fully matured and very pretty and super tall with crazy ostrich legs. There is talk of renovation at the lab which will include the basement storeroom (why renovate the basement of a lab that isn't generating any revenue? Who knows!) so Dren has to be moved. But where can you house a totally unique, dangerous creature the likes of which no one has ever seen before? Sarah Polley has a suggestion! How about a creepy, abandoned farmhouse in the woods? Of course! This is the house she grew up in apparently. Sarah shows Adrian her childhood bedroom which looks like a bag lady's shopping cart with a mattress thrown on top. They are attempting to trick you here into thinking you have learned something about the background and motivations of the character. Don't be fooled.
Dren is installed in the barn where she quickly grows bored. Sarah finds crayon drawings Dren has done of Adrian. The audience snickers. Everyone knows grossness is impending. Sarah's behavior becomes erratic, swinging pendulum style back and forth between maternal and cold, stern, analytical scientist. There is little rhyme or reason behind this so I guess we are supposed to assume it is her Difficult Childhood that made her this way.
It is somewhere around this point that the movie goes completely off the rails. Adrian realizes that the human DNA used to create Dren came from Sarah Polley which the audience already figured out ages ago and he is creeped out. Dren starts to get bitchy and dangerous around Sarah and seductive and sweet around Adrian. Dren kills a cat she was once affectionate toward (FORESHADOWING). Maybe she has PMS. Sarah decides to strap Dren to a table and chop the stinger off of her tail. For some reason she undresses her completely to do this (Dren is nude for the remainder of the film). Sarah takes the hunk of meat back to the lab to use it to synthesize the protein. Adrian returns to the barn to check on Dren, trips and falls and lands with his wang inside of her. Sarah Polley walks in on them and stands in the doorway of the barn totally stunned. The audience laughs uproariously. Adrian Brody chases their car with his pants hanging down and his butt crack peeking out.
He eventually returns to their apartment where he and Sarah resolve to kill Dren since they've isolated the protein and creating her has obviously driven them both insane. Whatever maternal instincts Sarah had toward Dren have shriveled up faster than Adrian's erection did, and while Adrian told Dren he loved her it is apparently not enough to keep him from killing her and reaping the profits from her DNA. Considering they both seemed to think of her as a daughter to a certain degree this is all extraordinarily fucked up. How they think they are going to pull off killing her at all is beyond me since she is obviously stronger and a more well-equipped predator than both of them combined. When they go back to the barn they find her in the water tank, unresponsive and apparently dying. When she dies they cry and bury her and burn all of her stuff.
BUT WAIT! Their boss from the lab shows up all pissed off saying there was HUMAN DNA in the protein (like DUH you guys way to go) and wants to see What They Have Wrought. They tell him he is welcome to dig her up if he wants. Except she obviously isn't dead, everyone who has been paying attention knows what is going to happen next. Dren swoops down and takes the douche bag boss away and we see her on the roof of the barn and she is a DUDE NOW. I cannot really buy this, honestly. Okay, so Dren has amphibious DNA and yes there is precedent for fish and such having hermaphroditic characteristics and turning from females into males and vice versa. And yes, it can even happen in humans sometimes sort of. But when it happens in humans it happens during puberty and if Dren's growth is so accelerated shouldn't this already have happened around the time she turned from a little girl into a sex machine? I have no idea if this stands up to actual science. I was past caring at this point because as soon as Ginger turned into a male we knew it was going to happen to Dren eventually as well. Also because he is picking off the other males in the room it is obvious he now wants to fuck Sarah Polley, which he does, forcibly, and it is disturbing. Adrian Brody attempts to get Dren off of his woman and the two of them wrestle for a bit before Sarah smashes Dren's head with a rock. Before she can land the killing blow because she hesitates like a dumbass, Dren stings Adrian in the heart and kills him.
So of COURSE Sarah Polley is now pregnant with a monster fetus and the pharmaceutical company is paying her to carry it. Her husband is dead, her monster daughter/son raped her and impregnated her so now we have dealt with abortion and genetic manipulation and incest and playing God and really there were just too many concepts in this movie and not enough actual exploration of what it all meant.
wow what a misguided misogynistic mess of what we used to call "cinema"
maybe i should make a gag wherein i point out the underlying similarities between the words "cinema" and "enema" but i think thats best left up to the writer's of "Splaise: Very Good Feelm"
Posted by: Daniel | 11 June 2010 at 08:54 PM