Movie Summary of the movie Splice by Michael The Moviegoer.
SPLICE = **1/2
“Genre-Splicing”
Once upon a time there were great science fiction movies AND great horror movies. In 1979 Ridley Scott perfectly mated these two genres and the offspring was the classic original “Alien”.
Vincenzo Natali’s “Splice” starts out as great sci-fi, but quickly devolves into a silly, goofy and predictable horror film. That’s bad news for fans of his more intelligent 1997 psychological thriller “Cube”. Natali showed a lot of promise with that film of a group of strangers who suddenly find themselves locked in a mysterious Rubik’s Cube-type maze of rooms.
“Splice” might have worked better if Natali was able to get more authentic performances from his actors. Sarah Polley and Oscar-winner Adrien Brody deliver their lines as though they’re embarrassed to even be on the set. Had they played these characters with a heightened sense of realism, the film might be more interesting. Instead, there is so much unintentional laughter from the audience that the future of “Splice” might be as a midnight-cult show.
Brody and Polley play bio-chemists in love. They’re experimenting with cloning and DNA. Their character names are Elsa and Clive, a not-so-subtle reference to the stars of the classic “Bride Of Frankenstein”.
Together, Elsa and Clive create a lab-baby with a face that looks oddly like a penis. This baby eventually grows into a woman with supermodel-looks on top, but with the legs and feet of a chicken.
There are bizarre twists and turns that I found quite entertaining, but kept wishing they existed in a better movie. I wish “Splice” had stayed with the sci-fi genre and not also wanted be a conventional horror film.
DVD Double Feature: In 1986, David Cronenberg did a remake of the classic horror film “The Fly”. But Cronenberg was wise not to combine two genres. His film was all sci-fi. Even after Jeff Goldblum accidentally merges himself with a housefly, the movie never loses it’s focus on the science involved with the situation as Goldblum desperately tries to find a way to reverse the process. It’s gory, but not in a horror film-genre way. It remains thoughtful and intelligent throughout. “Splice” should have been more like this.
Michael The Moviegoer
