SciFi 'Splice' a deeply psychological horror
Right after I saw Vincenzo Natali's bizarre little science fiction film titled "Splice," I ran into fellow critic Roger Ebert and told him that after "Mommie Dearest," this could be the nastiest Mother's Day movie ever made.
Ebert applauded my cynical observation, perhaps to be polite. But I wasn't kidding.
"Splice" isn't your standard creature feature with a Frankenstein-esque creation running amok and knocking off humans, although that element dominates this movie.
"Splice" might be perfectly at home on the Lifetime Channel as a cautionary domestic drama about generational cycles of child abuse. Except, maybe, for the part about creating a new humanoid life-form by genetically splicing together DNA from various animals.
That's what Elsa and Clive do.
They're lovers who work as bio-researchers for a company attempting to make profits on patents of spliced entities.
Clive (Adrien Brody) is a serious, by-the-book kind of guy. Elsa (Sarah Polley) tends to be more of a daring risk-taker when great discoveries are on the line.
The two successfully create a pair of genetically spliced life-forms. But that doesn't go well when the feminine half inexplicably changes sexes and attacks the other male in a bloody spray of violence.
Undeterred, Elsa embarks on another experiment, this time secretly mixing her own DNA in the experiment, and conjuring up an elfin-like critter that grows at an accelerated rate.
Elsa names her "baby" Dren - "nerd" spelled backward. Dren, first played by Abigail Chu as a child, then by Delphine Chaneac as an adolescent, is a masterpiece of makeup and effects, a humanoid being of unearthly beauty possessed of a strange, erotic attraction.
As the relationships between Elsa, Dren and Clive become increasingly outrageous and deliciously twisted, "Splice" retains an old-fashioned sense of fun, almost to the level of a black comedy.
(Natali named his researchers after the stars of the classic monster movie "Bride of Frankenstein" - Elsa Lanchester and Colin Clive. Yes, he's having fun with this movie.)
Natali first burst on the international scene with his 1997 surprise cult hit "Cube," about seven people struggling to free themselves from a cubicled prison.
In "Splice," he doesn't go for the easy exploitation of gore and action as do many horror films. He prefers to wage a psychological assault on our sense of propriety by delving into taboo areas where even ancient Greek playwrights would fear to tread.
Some audiences may not like Natali's emotionally cool characters, or his reluctance to give hard-core horror fans what they expect.
"Splice" is a thinking person's horror thriller, not just a standard cautionary tale about the dangers of playing genetic gods, unchecked by any controls or sense of ethics.
Stripped of its science-fiction trappings, "Splice" is an indictment of mothers who create offspring for all the wrong reasons, then can't figure out why their "families" don't turn out to be the perfect things they'd hoped for.
Like I said, this could be the nastiest Mother's Day movie ever made.
Next to "Mommie Dearest."
And maybe "Aliens."
"Splice"
Rating: ★ ★ ★
Starring: Sarah Polley, Adrien Brody, Delphine Chaneac, David Hewlett
Directed by: Vincenzo Natali
Other: A Warner Bros. release. Rated R for language, nudity, sexual situations, violence. 104 minutes