Before Oppenheimer and company at the Manhattan Project detonated their first A-bomb on the Alamogordo testing grounds way back in 1945, they were almost completely positive that the resulting chain reaction would stop at some point, probably, very probably, long before it destroyed the planet. Science is not without its risks and when humans start playing with the building blocks of existence, things can take an unexpected turn. Oppenheimer and company, along with the U.S. government thought it was worth the risk in order to win World War II and to also deal pre-emotively with certain other post-war geo-political situations that they anticipated fretfully. Herein lies one of the many maddening questions posed by Vincenzo Natalis SPLICE. When life fails to offer clear-cut answers to moral dilemmas, whats a scientist to do? One of the other equally maddening questions posed is even more troubling. When one has tossed aside the rules, where does that particular chain reaction stop?
SPLICE deals with a scenario where things turn out less well than at Alamogordo. The question asked periodically throughout the film, and not without a certain amount of mockery, is Whats the worst that could happen? The scientists, Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley), who keep asking that question are about to find out. They are the enfants terrible at Newstead Pharmaceuticals, bioengineers who make the cover of popular magazines, and who have created a new life form from bits and pieces of this and that, the combination of which holds the promise of curing the incurable of humankinds illnesses. So far the creatures are amorphous, vaguely phallic blobs capable of imprinting on one another and rendering up to their creators the proteins that will make them humankinds saviors..
Being only human, the fame and putative fortune go to their heads and, late one night, hopped up on sugar, jazz, and hubris, they splice a bit of human DNA into their hybrid template, just to prove that it can work. And that they can be the first to do it. Its right about then that the controlled experiment begins to get away from them, resulting in Dren (Delphine Chaneac), whose name, please note, is Nerd spelled backwards, and whose existence triggers the deeper ripples of the un- and subconscious to well up with primal ferocity in Clive and Elsa. Incapable of human speech, alien but somehow familiar through her accelerated life-cycle that takes her from tadpole to willowy sylph with frog-like legs and a scorpions tail, Dren becomes the blank canvas onto which Clive and Elsa project all the fears, hopes, past traumas and present confusion. Elsas curiosity about what will happen next combined with a mothering instinct is immediately at odds with Clives worry about the danger, to their careers and from what theyve created, as well as grappling with the nagging doubts that what theyve done is morally unsound.
Director and co-writer Vincenzo Natali places this cautionary tale squarely in the realm of allegory, allowing the terror to go into psychological places that are designed and executed to provoke maximum discomfort in the audience. He parses the modern family unit and the stresses of a child on a working couple, the instinctive responses to a monster rife with unpredictable actions, with clinical accuracy. By using Dren as the object, the darker instincts are reasonable. At the same time, making Dren communicate with the soothing chirps of a contented hamster or the distressed chatter of a wounded rabbit, having her move with the darting swiftness of a bird, and look at the world with eyes that are vulnerable, cunning, and beautiful even with their quatrefoil irises, make those darker impulses toward her unthinkable.
Natali is ambitious enough to also consider the terrors to be found in the business of science, the bottom line and political considerations that curtail and even puts the kaybosh on avenues of research that might yield beneficial results. On every level, though, he keeps the story as unpredictable as Dren herself, and just as potentially dangerous. Its the uncertainty of what the damage will be, psychological or physical, and when it will manifest, that makes the horror all but unbearable. Simple, old-fashioned bloodletting would be a relief in this context. At least it has the virtue of fantasy at a remove from the audiences own experiences.
Bathed in an eerie blue-gray light, imaginative, potent effects, and passionate performances, SPLICED is an intelligent horror film that chips away at the emotions and the intellect without compromise and without respite.
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