Judging by the commercials for 'Splice' you would think that this is a monster movie with genetic cloning as a gimmick. In actuality, it's a dramatization of Freud's Electra Complex with genetic cloning as a gimmick. Unfortunately, the film didn't pull all of its elements together for a coherent entertainment, but for at least two-thirds of it, my interest was held.
The product of the genetic 'splice' in this movie is called Dren (nerd spelled backwards) and she is an effective combination of real actors and special effects. She is a cross of too many animals to be named and is a real curiosity. After a rough first impression, Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley become her parental figures and main section of the movie is the dynamics of this offbeat family unit. Although their are a lot of plausibility issues with Dren's creation (you would hope their would be better monitoring of this type of science), the film draws you into the developing relationships between her and her parents. You get the feeling that had this story been played out honestly, some intriguing themes on the nature of life/family would have developed, but I guess commercial considerations required the thriller elements to take over.
Some of the problems with the movie have to do with the fact that many of the characters change their nature in absence of any apparent motivation. Dren goes from precocious to hostile without any real cause and effect logic. Furthermore, my friend and I had to fill in the gaps of her behavior after the movie was over to try to make sense of it. Dren is not alone, the two human leads act in ways late in the movie that do not fit anything their characters did up until that point. Sarah Polley performs a gruesome surgery on Dren which, although it serves a plot point, is out of character and Adrian Brody does something that is just plain abominable (the audience laughed really loud at that part, by the way, which I don't think was the intended reaction).
In the end all the curiosity of Dren is abandoned and she functions as a monster to scare the audience. It's too bad because this movie was entertaining from a psychological as well as a fantasy perspective until it sold out. A near miss.
The product of the genetic 'splice' in this movie is called Dren (nerd spelled backwards) and she is an effective combination of real actors and special effects. She is a cross of too many animals to be named and is a real curiosity. After a rough first impression, Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley become her parental figures and main section of the movie is the dynamics of this offbeat family unit. Although their are a lot of plausibility issues with Dren's creation (you would hope their would be better monitoring of this type of science), the film draws you into the developing relationships between her and her parents. You get the feeling that had this story been played out honestly, some intriguing themes on the nature of life/family would have developed, but I guess commercial considerations required the thriller elements to take over.
Some of the problems with the movie have to do with the fact that many of the characters change their nature in absence of any apparent motivation. Dren goes from precocious to hostile without any real cause and effect logic. Furthermore, my friend and I had to fill in the gaps of her behavior after the movie was over to try to make sense of it. Dren is not alone, the two human leads act in ways late in the movie that do not fit anything their characters did up until that point. Sarah Polley performs a gruesome surgery on Dren which, although it serves a plot point, is out of character and Adrian Brody does something that is just plain abominable (the audience laughed really loud at that part, by the way, which I don't think was the intended reaction).
In the end all the curiosity of Dren is abandoned and she functions as a monster to scare the audience. It's too bad because this movie was entertaining from a psychological as well as a fantasy perspective until it sold out. A near miss.
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