There are lots of ideas simmering in the brew of Splice’s intelligent and ambitious screenplay; the problem is that they don’t all quite come together in a coherent whole. But at least there’s an admirably tight focus, for there are basically only three characters in Vincenzo Natali’s technological horror film. Two of the parts of this triangle are played by genetic scientists and lovers Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, who are no strangers to critical acclaim. Dissatisfied with their pharmaceutical employers’ directives to simply extract proteins from the hybrid animals they’ve already created – they’re ugly little worm-things right out of Eraserhead – the couple decide to experiment with human DNA. What follows isn’t the usual cautionary tale about genetic experimentation and power, but rather an exploration of the uncomfortable maternal bond that forms between Polley’s character and the rapidly maturing, ostensibly female, human hybrid with an uncanny resemblance to Bjork (herself, I swear, of alien origin) that they’ve named Dren (“nerd,” spelled backwards). Its fascinating ideas aside, Splice can’t quite transcend its pulpy core as a mad-scientist flick. Neither horror movie nor drama, neither hard sci-fi film nor straight-up thriller, Splice comes across as an uneasy cinematic hybrid much like the scientists’ flawed creation.
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