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The Age of Commercialism

Excellent but underrated film

Absolutely brilliant

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This is the digimodern Frankenstein. Also, having studied the Book of Enoch, I know already the worst that could happen, because it already did some 45,000 years ago when the dark-hearted angelic beings mated with the daughters of men (Nephilim the result, who ruled the planet until they were wiped out by the Flood and battle against one another) and the monsters so well preserved in Greek mythology (Medusa, Minotaur, Cyclops, etc.) This film ramps up slowly, but it does ramp up to Jurassic Park proportions before it ends on a soft note of utterly confused human reflection. Watch this one only if you can handle lots of blood, the f-word, super freakiness, rape, humanocentric haughtiness beyond belief, and the Jersey Devil.

I don't have much to say... Splice is a really fucked up movie, in the "Human Centipede" kind of way but less gross and nauseating, however equally disturbing to the bone. My face throughout watching was a grimace of discomfort and I'm pretty sure there was a certain part that had me screaming in disgust. I actually enjoyed it. If you're looking for something that pushes the boundaries of the shock effect, I recommend it.

As hinted at via the lead characters' names (inspired by Colin CLIVE and ELSA Lanchester), "Splice" is basically just a 21st century update of the legendary "Frankenstein" tale. It's about scientists playing God and attempting to create new life without thinking about the possible consequences. The difference is of course that science and laboratories have evolved quite tremendously since Mary Shelley invented the immortal premise, and thus Boris Karloff's corpse has been replaced by microscopic bits of DNA and the resurrection process via lighting & thunderstorms has been replaced with a complicated splicing process that I don't even bother to understand. Call me old-fashioned, but this advanced and pseudo-intellectual kind of Sci-Fi is quite unappealing, pretentious and mostly boring. Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley – their mediocre performances are undoubtedly still the best thing about the whole film – form a brilliant couple of scientists specialized in DNA research. For their employer, a massive pharmaceutical company called N.E.R.D (ha ha!), they are supposed to mix and merge DNA from various animal species and create a brand new organism. They do this quite successfully; with the creation of a pair of blobby critters they name Fred and Ginger, But Elsa wants to go even further. She persuades Clive to continue their experiments and even add human DNA into the cocktail, with as result the "birth" of a humanoid that looks like a rodent with amphibious lungs and a split forehead. Dren, as they name her, rapidly grows into a curious female and it soon becomes very difficult to keep her under control and hidden for the outside world. In spite of the intellectual and relevant subject matter, "Splice" is a surprisingly dumb and highly implausible film. The first half is still absorbing and eventful, with a disastrous press conference as gory highlight, but then it suddenly turns into a stupid, tedious and inconceivable mess. I fail to believe that a vivid and boisterous creature like Dren can possibly be kept hidden in the basement of a mastodon company without being noticed, and that's just the least annoying thing of everything that doesn't make sense! The script suddenly comes up with a sub plot about Elsa's troubled childhood, but that remains vague and random. The couple also constantly changes their minds and roles. At first Clive is reluctant and wants to destroy Dren while Elsa treats her lovingly like she nurtured it in her own womb. Later on, however, it's Clive who protects Dren from Elsa who wants to kill it with a shovel. Make up your damn minds! If all this isn't laughable enough yet, Clive naturally also copulates with his hamster-faced abomination. Pretty much like Dren herself, "Splice" is quite an abomination and I can't say I'm too surprised because even his more acclaimed movies "Cube" and "Cypher" were terribly overrated.

The story offers quite a promising premise, despite it's not the first time. Unfortunately the plot becomes a little bit predictable once Elsa decides against Clive in killing the baby Dren. It goes on normally for an already predicted plot but then the plot gives away big time when Fred and Ginger show their claws and start fighting. The predictability is also done by the trailer that was giving out too much detail. That makes the only decently nice twist in the movie to be when Dren suddenly grows wings. The character developments are very imbalanced and quite unclear. Clive's character doesn't really get developed right. How can he turn from one that wanted to kill the experiment to someone that would make out with it? Also the number of characters is too small for this kind of movie to work. It should at least have two more characters to give the story more color. The acting is a standard job in overall. Adrien Brody gets quite confused in expressions when acting out the various emotions in different scenes. Sarah Polley did quite okay on the expressions, but her dialog has emotions missing here and there.