Splice

If the scientists who recently manufactured the first artificially created DNA had been in this movie, there would be potential for fear and a semblance of even movie “realism.” Well, they weren’t.

Splice is… bad. I can’t come up with a cool way to say it. Clive (Adrien Brody) and his brother Gavin (Brandon McGibbon) look like they were alternates for the Ramones. Elsa (Sarah Polley) is the girl next door trying to be the alternative girl so she can hang with the band. “Yeah, right. THEY’RE scientists,” kept ringing in my mind. They are way too cool and way too young to have broken thorough the barrier of human cell manipulation. I have a hard time believing they graduated in the top 60% of their high school class.

The list of ridiculousness is long, but here are few… SPOILER ALERT!!! You can operate a lab overseen by corporate bureaucracy in which you can test clone hundreds of unsanctioned embryos (or 4, as seen in the montage), bring one to term, and raise it to young adulthood with almost no one noticing. When someone does notice, it is because he is nearly killed by said human hybrid that is running free around the lab. The genetic creation that can change human history is scolded like a pet that peed on the carpet for nearly killing a fellow scientist. Did I mention the door was unlocked?

There are so many plot holes, story manipulations and stupid ideas crammed into this movie, it’s laughable. Literally. Director Vincenzo Natali should have intentionally gone straight for the MST3K audience or decided to stay away from this project completely. (Oh, wait! He helped with the screenplay.) By the time it actually attempted to be a horror movie, it had 5 minutes left. I had tears of unintended laughter and a bad taste in my mouth from the last 100 minutes. I don’t think I’ve used the phrase, “…And you’ve lost me” so many times in the same movie. (Assuming that I was pulled back in, from the last time I was lost.)

Splice made Species look like a Shakespearian triumph. At least Species was enjoyable and followed a path of “believability.” Splice feels like it was conceptualized by Adrien’s mechanic cousin that has blackmail material. I could go on with the MANY problems of this film, like Elsa’s instability within her character, the way she is depicted as Eve taking fruit from the Tree, and how Dren “doesn’t eat meat…”  (The good part was the nudity towards the end. But wait… it was awkward, uncomfortable, alien nudity, so that goes back in the bad column.) I will just cut it short and say the closest this movie gets to horror is horrible.

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