Early Review of Splice

Splice hits the shelves this Tuesday, and I just got a chance to watch it. You should watch it. Everyone should watch it. It's awesome. Get it at Reckless Video.

In the interest of everyone seeing this movie, there will be no spoilers in this post except that everything goes wrong. Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) are genetic engineers working for a big pharmaceutical company. They splice DNA from different species together in order to find proteins to create drugs blah blah science blah. This is all interesting and topical and brings up a cornucopia of moral and ethical dilemmas to play around with as is, especially when they decide they want to use human DNA as well. Of course, the company that funds them puts the ol' kabosh on going forward with tampering with human DNA. And, of course, the scientists do it anyways.

This is a classic Frankenstien's monster situation. Elsa and Clive have created something they know relatively nothing about. They have also created something with human characteristics, so the lines between experiment and love child are kinda iffy. We also find out that Elsa has some intense mommy issues that play a huge role in her motives. As one of the people working on the movie says somewhere in the special features, this movie isn't about a monster doing terrible things to people; it's about people doing terrible things to their monster.

I really like all the suspense this movie creates. It takes us on a journey- there's a real plot and real characters that we actually care about, an interesting story line and subplot revolving around the characters' goals, motives, and relationships. But eventually, we end up alone in a dark, cold forest being chased by an angry monster. It's a comfortable place for a horror movie to wind up. I don't want to give away too much, but it also ends with the wonderful feeling that it's not really over, that some other terrible thing could happen in the future. Actually, the last line of the movie is, "What's the worst that could happen?" Duh-duh-DUHHH!!!!

So, if you like scary movies (which I guess would be why you might read this blog), if you like dramas, if you like moral conflict and thrillers, DEFINITELY see Splice. I should also add that this movie was written and directed by Vincenzo Natali, the same guy who brought us Cube. I personally have not seen Cube, but I know a lot of people who totally geek out over it, so I dunno if that means anything.

I was planning on watching another flick today, the 1930s film Freaks. Stay tuned, we'll see if I get a chance to watch it later on.