Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley play the Bio-scientists who carry out this experiment. And I have got to give them credit for their performances, for me those guys played a huge part in what made this movie watchable. But I’ve also got to give credit to the creature design and the effects used to realise it. I loved the trailer when I first saw it a year or so ago, but thinking back to why I loved it so much, it was those legs I’m sure! The humanoid animal, pretty much looked like a skinhead girl with eyes really far apart, with Satyr legs. Whenever she/it was onscreen, I couldn’t take my eyes off those crazy ass legs, the thing sure was freaky to look at, but this fascination soon wears off and what I found myself left with was a dull story about a couple and they’re freak of nature pet child.
The couple are working for a company called NERD who I think were contracted by the government to carry out all these crazy bio experiments in the hope to create some sort of enzyme/organism/gene (or something like that) which would be a major advancement in medical science. That’s pretty much how Brody and Polley get away with playing crazy experiments in the basement of the NERD facility. The Splice experiment was not commissioned by the government and is highly illegal so they had to hide it. It came about by the “official body” government agency cancelling the experiments that they were doing, so they both agree that they need to continue and push further, without anyone knowing, and the result, is some strange creature that they eventually call Dren (NERD spelt backwards).
I thought the “official” side of the story to be completely throw-away but necessary to attach the characters to. It wasn’t so much about the morality of what they were doing; it became a story about human emotion, with a touch of freakiness just to keep things interesting. The emotional tie in comes from the couples connection to Dren who ages at a rapid rate and begins to look more and more human (with really far apart eyes and Satyr legs). They start to treat her like their child, which in my opinion felt way too forced as the best they could do to suggest the parental stance, was for Sarah Polley to come out with the authoritarian mother speak like she was shouting at a naughty kid in a grocery store. Then the movie goes one step further into territory I didn’t want to go to.
At this point, I stopped being fascinated by the freakiness and started wondering where this movie was going. The obvious answer is Dren turns bad and attacks the couple. This kind of does happen early on after Dren kills a cat, then forces Sarah Polley onto the ground. But she’s part animal and this act is forgiven but doesn’t go unpunished. Brody starts to sense something weird in Dren, and an attraction comes into play, that’s when he guesses that his girlfriend had used her own DNA to create Dren. You know where this is going without me mentioning another thing, and I’m totally put off.
I don’t want to completely shoot this movie down as it is clearly a very unique film. I got a little bored and the outcome was nothing more than typical. But for me, it comes back to the pitch; I couldn’t help but imagine myself in the shoes of the protagonists, what I would do in their position when that unpredictable thing is prancing around. And that uneasiness was ever present whilst I watched this film. Whenever Dren was present onscreen, I felt the threat of an imminent strike, I always expected her to flip out, and I would think “don’t get too close”. I mean, I don’t really trust cats, in real life, and when I’m around them I just feel vulnerable like they are going to strike at any moment. And that emotion, that uneasiness was really the highlight of the movie for me. It was all about the creature, and Adrian Brody and Sarah Polleys acting. I really do wish the story would have been more engaging, but like I’ve already said, it feels like the story was forcefully extracted from an interesting idea.
Vincenzo Natali who made “Cube” co-wrote and directed splice, and he had help and influence from Guillermo Del Toro who obviously saw potential in the script, maybe he felt differently when he saw the final product, maybe not. Guillermo is a master filmmaker and arguably one of the best creative minds of our generation, and I do not dare dispute his knowledge, but I know what I felt when I watched this, and I can only convey my own experience.
I would recommend this flick purely for it being fascinating at times, just to look at the creature. I loved the trailer when it came out, but again it was the idea and the creature design that captured my interest. Maybe I’m being too hard on it, this is a totally original movie, I have to support that direction, and I love the fact that movies like this actually get made nowadays.
