Splice, in every trailer I’ve ever seen for it, is being sold like a classic science-gone-wrong monster movie, in which Dren (played as a child by Abigail Chu and as a teen/adult by Delphine Chaneac) basically goes off the rails and starts doing evil things with her stinger tail and general creepy appearance. Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley) are two biochemists working on the cutting edge of gene-splicing technology. We’re talking stuff that seems like science fiction. They’re creating completely artificial organism out of completely spliced-together DNA in the hopes of building a gross slug-penis monster that can be used to create proteins used for medicine. (Of course, about two weeks ago, a guy named Dr. Craig Venter did just that when he created a self-replicating microorganism out of recombinant DNA, making the movie’s release incredibly timely. The end result of their experiments, which dance with the forbidden by using a little segment of human DNA, is Dren. Congratulations, it’s a girl! Brody in particular gets some good dialog, as he’s the quirky one of the duo and gets all the jokes, while Polley gets to be the more emotive, serious one. It’s a good balance that plays to the strengths of the two actors. Since they get all the screen time, they have to be able to hold the audience’s attention, and they do that very well. The script of the film, from director Vincenzo Natali, Antoinette Terry Bryant, and Doug Taylor, finds the right balance between the dramatic, the pseudo-scientific, the horror, and the comedy you need to make a movie like this work without falling into the trap of being too moralistic, stupid, or worse, boring. Even when the movie becomes a bit predictable towards the end, it never ceases to be entertaining, which is good. The ending is incredibly cliché, and some of the twists near the end were a bit obvious and expected, but that’s the case when you’re dealing with what is essentially a prettied-up, more intelligent B-movie with a good cast. Of crucial importance to the movie is Dren. Considering that she’s the third presence on the screen, if she doesn’t look good, the movie doesn’t have a shot. However, the combination of CGI and practical effects used to bring her to life works, thanks to the top-notch work of Greg Nicotero and Howard Baker. Dren as a child and Dren as a teen/adult are really incredible. She’s off-putting, but just odd enough to look like a monster, but not so odd as to be outlandish. She’s got human DNA, after all, and needs to look like a plausible humanoid hybrid. Splice isn’t a brilliant movie by any stretch of the imagination, and the movie’s finale is flawed. However, the way the movie moves, and the way the actors handle the slow progression of their plan from ‘within our control’ to ‘oh my God, we’re totally up a creek here!’ is really well done. Splice isn’t the second-coming of Species, but is more like Ginger Snaps, with the monster as a parable for the circle of life, and the problems of the parents of a precocious teenage monster. They grow up so fast, don’t they?
title: “Splice Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-07-21” author: “Amanda Bailey”
The reason being because Splice is insane. Director Vincenzo Natali is probably best known to us geeks as the director of inspired low budget hit Cube and the criminally overlooked Cypher. What fascinated me about Splice was that Natali clearly shows an intelligent awareness of how ludicrous the whole premise of the film is, yet still manages to inject genuine moments of terror and pathos in amongst some great visual comedy. Rather than Species, I’d compare Splice to Hollow Man in terms of how the movie feels, without trying to be too descriptive and give anything away, as I’d avoided reading or watching anything to do with the film, and the pay off was immense. Splice treads a very similar path, as we follow the scientific journey that Clive Nicoli and Elsa Kast (played by Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, respectively) take, as they pay no heed to the lesson learnt by Dr. Frankenstein in their quest to create new, genetically engineered life. The film is given an incredible strength from its premise, as the results of their work mean that any organism we’re shown in the film is entirely new and therefore, entirely unpredictable. Many of the film’s shocks come from seeing what will develop next, and Natali holds an incredible feeling of unease and tension over the entire film, so much so that my usual note taking was kept to a bare minimum as I sat enthralled by it. I knew within the first five minutes that I was onboard with Splice, as it ably showed a great sense of comedy, mixed in with some suitably disgusting effects. And by making Dren such a masterwork – a mix of the beautiful, innocent, deadly and ethereal – you don’t ever question what’s on screen. At one point, my head started to spin at how realistic and aesthetically stunning some of their work is. If you don’t know what a Dren is, then I implore you not to go looking, especially not on IMDb, where I was mortified to see a spoiler of film-ruining potential. Quite how no one’s had it taken down is a mystery. While the KNB EFX group go to work, it remains for the emotional and comedic core of Splice to be divided between Brody and Polley. It was an incredibly savvy move, as both actors are known for effortlessly dealing with dramatic content, so between them they easily ground and realise the more preposterous parts of the story. What came as a surprise was how readily they dealt with the humour of the film, most notably in an early scene which hammered home the B-movie roots of Splice, as a moment of over-the-top slapstick plays out when Polley’s character finds herself trapped in a lab room with ‘something’. Adrian Brody is a notable actor and much more on the geek radar after the likes of King Kong and, more recently, Predators, whereas Sarah Polley, despite Go and the Dawn Of The Dead remake, still seems to be a massively underappreciated and underused actress in Hollywood. Hopefully, the controversial nature of Splice will bring her more attention, as she’s more than deserving of it. The closer the film draws to its finale, the more conventional it seems to become, falling into predictability, not once, but twice, after striving so hard to be the opposite. There is one moment near the end that is incredibly disturbing and still makes me feel uneasy. It’s just a shame it happened amongst the weaker parts. The moment I refer to, as well as other parts of the last act, when things become more intimate and hostile, will prove to be talking points for a long time to come, I imagine, and it’s very difficult to write my way around them, but I can assure you that the fresher you are to the film, the more impactful it will be. Splice is on general release in the UK from 23rd July. Our first Splice review is here.
