SPLICE.

Warning: The following review is semi-spoilerous.

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What is there to say about Splice? Well, I've been anticipating this movie for quite some time. My regular readers might know that I'm a long-time fan of director Vincenzo Natali, who directed one of my favorite movies--Cube. He also directed a great paranoid thriller called Cypher. Natali, like many directors, has his staples that come with every movie he does. One-word title... check. Actor David Hewlett... check. Slow reveals rather than jump scares... check. Ending where one character goes crazy, a well-liked character dies suddenly, and those remaining are left with an ambiguous ending and/or choice... check. The overall movie is very strange... check. Yeah, I could leave my review at that, but I won't.

The movie is about scientists and couple Elsa (Sarah Polley) and Clive (Adrien Brody). They work with splicing different DNA together to create new species in order to find proteins that might cure diseases. But when their company refuses to let them move on to human/animal hybrid splicing, Else and Clive decide to try it in secret. What they end up creating is Dren (Delphine Chaneac), a creature that grows into a feminine-like creature with animalistic features and tendencies. So Elsa and Clive have to try and keep it a secret from their bosses, including William Barlow (David Hewlett), as they study and grow to love their newest experiment.

From the first trailer (the teaser, I suppose), I thought this movie was gonna be pretty cool. Then the theatrical trailer came out, and it played it up like a straight horror/monster movie, and I became confused. I looked like straight-up Species, a mainstream horror film, and that is not the type of film Vincenzo Natali makes. So I figured that the trailer had to be misleading. Fortunately, it was. This is not a horror movie (except maybe the climax), but more of a... well... family drama--with monsters. Elsa and Clive go through everything with Dren that your average parent does. How do you feed it? What do you do when it's sick? How do you respond to temper tantrums? The film is more about our two leads growing as people as they discover what kind of parents they are with a more... abnormal child. Are there moments of suspense/tension? Yeah. But there are no jump scares, which is an insane rarity with any kind of movie dealing with this subject matter (monsters or children, these days, honestly).

The acting is done really well (and I particularly love David Hewlett as usual), but the standout is Delphine Chaneac as Dren. In what is basically a speechless role, she had to emote using her eyes and body language--and on top of that, she had to be both human and animalistic. There's really not all that big of a cast for this movie (again, which is pretty par for the course with Natali), though the guy they got to play Brody's brother was a great choice. Looks like they could really be brothers.

Before going into this movie, I had heard that the last 20 minutes or so kind of derails and gets very... strange. I have to say that I saw no derailment, as I saw practically all of it coming a mile away (not sure what that says about me, though... especially in one or two cases... like Clive's... moment). So I really didn't have any problems with any of it on an entertainment level, as I didn't think the last 20 minutes (or so) came from left field in the world the movie had set up.

The only major issues I had were with the character developments. Clive starts out early on wanting a child and Elsa doesn't. Then Dren comes along and Clive wants to kill it and Elsa loves it. Then Elsa starts going crazy and Clive starts to care for it. Honestly, I could go with Elsa's development easily, because they flowed well and they made sense. In fact, I liked it quite a bit. But Clive's development jumped all over the place. He shows interest in creating this thing, then immediately hates the idea and wants to destroy it. Then he wants to get rid of the creature for a good bulk of the movie before suddenly becoming attached to it. There was no real flow or reason for any of his major thought changes (except maybe one), so it was a bit off-putting to me at times. Regardless, I still enjoyed his character, especially once he started to care about Dren.

There's not much more I can say about the movie. It has some great cinematography (I particularly love the 'wings behind Clive' shot). Maybe I'm just really, really strange, but I didn't think any of the story was all that surprising, but it was still quite entertaining regardless. Like most of Natali's films, it'll probably split the audience. Some will love it. Some won't. But I recommend checking it out. After all... what's the worst that could happen?


A Keanu 'Whoa'

(P.S. I saw somewhere a while back where somebody made a MewTwo joke... which is hilarious. Well, if you were ever into PokeMon, anyway. But yeah, at times, there is quite a striking resemblance to both Mew and MewTwo...)