Vincenzo Natali really is a clever guy; a writer/director with a great CV both in intelligent and original sci-fi (Cube, Cypher) and art direction. I was therefore looking forward to his take on genetics in Splice but oh, isn’t disappointment a terrible thing?
The premise in itself is a good one; Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) are a pair of cocky biochemists who successfully manage to splice human and animal DNA resulting in a completely new life form. Cue a fitting metaphor of motherhood and nature versus nurture as Elsa connects to this “child” as if it were her own. The birth metaphor has always been a staple of sci-fi from Frankenstein to Alien but in the light of new genetic technology it has grown in relevance rather than become cliché. Splice therefore begins quite well as the newborn is introduced and Clive and Elsa wrestle with the moral and logistical implications.
What is cliché on the other hand, is the sudden injection of sex and violence that happens a third of the way into the film. As soon as it became apparent that Dren was going to grow up into a mostly anatomically correct version of a young woman I suddenly had the horrible realisation as to where the film was headed. Sure enough, Natali delivers not one but two “shocking” sexual encounters between Dren and both of her pseudo-parents. This silly and frankly boring turn of events completely killed the film for me. To give a comparison; this is a film that started as The Fly and ended as Species.
To give some credit where it’s due, the one area of the production where the quality control never drops is in the special effects and art direction. All of the mutant creatures have a weighty, tangible quality and the design of Dren from childhood to adult owes a lot to the visual style of Guillermo del Toro– all misshapen angles and clammy flesh.
Despite this, Splice is tacky, predictable and has a dénouement which is cringe-inducing. The fact that there is the germ of a good idea in the first thirty minutes only makes the descent into schlock all the more disappointing.