FILM REVIEW: SPLICE

Madman Films
Now Showing

“God schmod, I want my monkey man!” screamed Bart Simpson when his teacher Mrs Krabappel denied his request for knowledge to assist in his playing God and creating a hybrid, no doubt for mischievous purposes. Genetic physicists, and couple, Elsa (Sarah Polley) and Clive (Adrien Brody), presumably had nobler intentions in mind when they spliced some human and animal DNA together, but the end result in Vincenzo Natali’s sci-fi thriller is no less demented.

With the threat of funding cuts, the pair secretly begin work on a cloning experiment using a mix of human and animal DNA. The results are more effective than they had hoped with the creation gestating at an alarming rate and once “born”, growing faster than the children on a daytime soap.

Within a week, Dren (it’s nerd backwards) resembles an adolescent girl although with some animal-like features and a bald pate; think a young Sinead O’Connor although when Dren turns things get decidedly more ugly than ripping up a polaroid of the Pope on national TV. Blood will out, as they say, and like all teenagers when they don’t get their own way, Dren’s animalistic nature kicks-in.

Natali’s film swings between serious sc-fi (Should man play God? Nature v nurture?) and schlocky horror, with a few effectively creepy moments and one scene, involving Clive and Dren, which is creepy for entirely non-horror reasons. But there’s fun to be had with Splice, and Polley and Brody, two typically non-Hollywood leads, have fun with it.