Digital Chum - Virtual fish guts and other nonsense

Adrien Brody

Splice… What’s the worst that could happen?

Splice - Dren and Elsa Ever since I saw the trailer for the movie Splice, I’ve been looking forward to its arrival. It’s been on my calendar with the appropriate emailed reminders.

Well, I just got back from seeing it and, in my opinion, it was well worth the wait. Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley were believable and each played the necessary emotional range with skill and clarity… which is probably what made the movie so engaging.

Brody and Polley play Clive and Elsa, two genetic scientists specializing in gene splicing. They’ve created a couple unique creatures that produce a protein used to treat diseases in livestock and have earned an almost rock-star reputation within their company. When the company threatens to shut down their operation (for reasons left out of this review so as not to spoil anything), they decide to wade into the land of questionable ethics and use human DNA in their next (secret) splicing project… just to see if they can.

Splice - Dren and Elsa As expected, things get out of hand and the ensuing interactions between Clive, Elsa, and Dren (the "creature," played brilliantly by Delphine Chaneac) get more and more complex, dangerous, and dramatic.

It’s tough to say much more without adding a few spoilers, but suffice it to say that Clive and Elsa learn the meaning of the phrase "What’s the worst that could happen?" …and each stage of "worst" grows out of the previous stage as both Clive and Elsa rationalize their way past each successive breach of ethics.

Splice is all at once endearing, creepy, suspenseful, shocking, touching, and terrifying… with a touch of "gross" thrown in to top it all off. The story has elements of Frankenstein, Jurassic Park, and Species, but keeps its own identity with its tight acting, clean writing, and great directing.

And for the record… rabbits aren’t a vegetable. *

* go see the movie