‘Splice’ up your Life

That Dren thing has some nice legs, right?

The movie: Splice

Director: Vincenzo Natali

Who wrote it: Vincenzo Natali, Antoinette Terry Bryant, and Doug Taylor

Famous people you would recognize: Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley…and that’s about it.

Random Polley flashback: I could not stop thinking of Polley’s role in Go. That was one helluva rave in the late ‘90s.

The story: Biochemists Clive (Brody) and Elsa (Polley) attempt to play God by creating this thing that is kind of like a female and kind of like an alien. Actually, it looks like something you’d see in the Star Wars universe. Nonetheless, their attempt to create life teaches them a valuable lesson. And that lesson is: don’t do it.

The review: Unfortunately, I missed the screening for this film at the San Francisco International Film Festival. There was something about the trailer that made me think, “What the hell is this?! It looks great!” Then, I ran into a movie critic who saw the film and he said, “You know all those cool parts you saw in the trailer? Well, that’s pretty much the entire movie.”

Considering I missed the screening, I felt a bit relieved that I didn’t miss out on much. At the same time, I had this urge to watch it. It was like a craving for donuts. So I did. As soon as I stepped out of the theater I tweeted the following:

What the hell was wrong with those people in SPLICE? That movie was crazy with a capital WTF. Loved it.

Going into this movie, I thought I was going to be way too dumb for it. I thought it would be an intellectual sci-fi thriller about stem cell research and all that other hoo-ha that I should care about but not smart enough to understand; let alone hold a mature conversation about it. That was all proven wrong when, in the beginning of the movie, Clive and Elsa got all giddy over their creations named Fred & Ginger: two fleshy blobs of life that were concocted from splicing the genes of various animals. Quite frankly, the two creatures looked like deformed penises. At that point, I realized that this was a high-profile campy movie in the same vein as Human Centipede. If you take away the celebrity wattage of Brody and Polley (one who won an Oscar, the other nominated), the movie would be something you can watch at 2 in the morning on Spike TV right after an infomercial about the sartorial magic of the Infinity Dress.

With each scientifically bad choice our heroes make, we get more and more entertained. When they create the quasi-human with an accelerated aging pace, Dren (French actress Delphine Chaneac), that’s when ride gets even more exciting and unsettling. From the get-go you know these two biochemists are digging themselves deeper and deeper into a hole of ethical and ridiculous dilemmas that may be dramatic, but end up amusing. Then there’s the apex of the movie’s WTF factor: a “love scene” which involves the sprouting of wings out of arousal and alien-like eroticism. You’ll know it when you see it.

There may be some intellectual value of this movie, but like I said, I am too dumb to notice it. I was too busy smothering my immature laughter and cringing with disturbed delight at this Frankenstein-esque story that is cut from the same cloth of loopy movies that involve genetic engineering and delusional scientists who get greedy with their creations. Grade: B+