Max Sci-Fi Horror Takes R-Rated To The Edge, Smart And Disturbing Body Nightmare
Science fiction and horror have overlapped ever since the first sci-fi story, Frankenstein, stunned readers with the amoral scientist and his attempts to create life. Over two hundred years later, scientists taking experiments too far has remained a consistent trope of sci-fi, including a 2009 box office bomb that pushed the envelope a little too far, according to most critics. Splice, a small-scale story about two scientists raising a human-animal hybrid, is steeped in discussions about scientific ethics before, as always, all hell breaks loose.
Scientists Playing God
Scientists Clive and Elsa, played, respectively, by Academy-award winners Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, managed to create two amorphous creatures named Fred and Ethel as proof that their genetic research was on the right track. Quietly, without letting their bosses know, the two manage to create Dren, named after the young being saw their shirts with “N.E.R.D.” written on them and spelled it backward. It’s a cute moment, and the young Dren is a highlight of Splice, but if experiments always went right, no one would ever be interested in any sci-fi movie.
Splice unfolds mainly in an abandoned farm, where Clive and Elsa can raise Dren away from prying eyes and also to save some money on the budget because you can tell most of the effort went towards the animal-human hybrid creature. Dren rapidly ages, becoming a “teenager,” where she’s played by French ballerina Delphine Chaneac, who does a fantastic job getting across Dren’s emotions without saying a single word.
As compared to more classic versions of body horror, from the many works of David Cronenberg to the more recent Substance, Splice isn’t quite as disturbing, not in the classic “ick” fashion one would expect. Instead, the film turns Dren into a strange hybrid who’s attractive and, with her large, anime-style eyes, is clearly capable of emotion, so the horror comes from realizing this obviously unnatural being is intelligent, capable of higher levels of thought but again, is the product of an illegal experiment.
A Slow-Burn That Catches Fire
The film gets a lot of mileage out of characters debating the ethics of scientific research, what counts as intelligent life, and where Dren fits into the world now that she’s here. That part of Splice is well done, and for constant scenes of dialogue and debate, it’s compelling and contemplative. This makes the wild last-minute third-act sequence all the more horrifying when it arrives and completely changes the tone of the movie to one of pure horror.
Even with the twist ending, Splice became a hit with critics, even earning praise from Roger Ebert, but it was largely ignored at the box office. Against a budget of $30 million, the film pulled in $28 million, and while the marketing budget was very tiny, it didn’t even recoup the production budget, relying on DVD and Blu-Ray releases to help the film turn a small profit. A dialogue-heavy scientific drama that veers into body horror isn’t an easy sell, and though the film has attracted a small following, it’s not at that cult classic level just yet, and by now, 15 years after its release, that ship has sailed.
You can experience Splice and judge it for yourself on Max. Just be warned, there are a few moments and images from the film that will burn themselves onto your brain once you see them, and no matter what you do, they will be hard to forget. Don’t let the opening 15 minutes fool you; it earns that R-rating by going from 0 to 100 in the span of 5 seconds once that final act kicks in.
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