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It doesn't take its terrific premise quite as far as it should, but Splice is a smart, well-acted treat for horror fans.

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Vincenzo Natali

Adrien Brody

Sarah Polley

Delphine Chaneac

Simona Maicanescu

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Somebody let the genome out of the bottle

Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley in "Splice."

Well-timed to open soon after genome pioneer Craig Venter’s announcement of a self-replicating cell, here’s a halfway serious science-fiction movie about two researchers who slip some human DNA into a cloning experiment, and end up with a unexpected outcome or a child or a monster, take your pick. The script blends human psychology with scientific speculation and has genuine interest until it goes on autopilot with one of the chase scenes Hollywood now permits few films to end without.

In the laboratory of a genetic science corporation, we meet Clive and Elsa ( Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley ), partners at work and in romance, who are trying to create a hybrid animal gene that would, I dunno, maybe provide protein while sidestepping the nuisance of having it be an animal first. Against all odds, their experiment works. They want to push ahead, but the corporation has funded quite enough research for the time being and can’t wait to bring the “product” to market.

Elsa rebels and slips some human DNA into their lab work. What results is a new form of life, part animal, part human, looking at first like a rounded SpongeBob and then later like a cute kid on Pandora, but shorter and not blue. This creature grows at an astonishing rate, gets smart in a hurry and is soon spelling out words on a Scrabble board without apparently having paused at the intermediate steps of learning to read and write.

Clive thinks they should terminate it. Elsa says no. As the blob grows more humanoid, they become its default parents, and she names it Dren, which is nerd spelled backward, so don’t name your kid that.

Dren has a tail and wings of unspecific animal origin, and hands with three fingers, suggesting a few sloth genes, although Dren is hyperactive. She has the ability common to small monkeys and CGI effects of being able to leap at dizzying speeds around a room. She’s sweet when she gets a dolly to play with, but don’t get her frustrated.

The researchers keep Dren a secret, both because they ignored orders by creating her, and because, though Elsa didn’t want children, they begin to feel like Dren’s parents. This feeling doesn’t extend so far as to allow her to live with them in the house. They lock her in the barn, which seems harsh treatment for the most important achievement of modern biological science.

Dren is all special effects in early scenes, and then quickly grows into a form played by Abigail Chu when small and Delphine Chaneac when larger. She also evolves more attractive features, based on the Spielberg discovery in “E.T.” that wide-set eyes are attractive. She doesn’t look quite human, but as she grows to teenage size she could possibly be the offspring of Jake and Neytiri, although not blue.

Brody and Polley are smart actors, and the director, Vincenzo Natali , is smart, too; do you remember his “The Cube” (1997), with subjects trapped in a nightmarish experimental maze? This film, written by Natali with Antoinette Terry Bryant and Douglas Taylor , has the beginnings of a lot of ideas, including the love that observably exists between humans and some animals. It questions what “human” means, and suggests it’s defined more by mind than body. It opens the controversy over the claims of some corporations to patent the genes of life. It deals with the divide between hard science and marketable science.

I wish Dren’s persona had been more fully developed. What does she think? What does she feel? There has never been another life form like her. The movie stays resolutely outside, viewing her as a distant creature. Her “parents” relate mostly to her memetic behavior. Does it reflect her true nature? How does she feel about being locked in the barn? Does she “misbehave,” or is that her nature?

The film, alas, stays resolutely concerned with human problems. The relationship. The corporation. The preordained climax. Another recent film, “ Ricky ,” was about the French parents of a child who could fly. It also provided few insights into the child, but then Ricky was mentally as young as his age, and the ending was gratifyingly ambiguous. Not so with Dren. Disappointing then, that the movie introduces such an extraordinary living being and focuses mostly on those around her. All the same, it’s well done, and intriguing.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

• Brandon McGibbon as Gavin
• Delphine Chaneac as Dren
• David Hewlett as Barlow
• Sarah Polley as Elsa
• Adrien Brody as Clive
• Antoinette Terry Bryant
• Douglas Taylor

Directed by

• Vincenzo Natali

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Movie review: ‘Splice’

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“Splice” is a hybrid that works. It’s a smart, slickly paced, well-acted science-fiction cautionary tale-horror movie-psychological drama. In its mix are ethical quandaries in biotechnology, nature versus nurture and an adorable-sexy-disturbing monster. So there’s that. But it wins best in show by focusing on one of the weirder relationship triangles in recent memory.

Elsa (Sarah Polley) and Clive ( Adrien Brody) are brilliant scientists creating genetically modified organisms to harvest proteins that might cure diseases. Their crowning achievement is a pair of multi-animal creations that resemble massive, fleshy worms. When they realize they’re about to lose the chance to pursue their ultimate goal — a human-animal hybrid ( George W. Bush was right!) whose proteins could defeat cancer and other scourges — they rush to finish their work. As Clive says, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

As one might imagine, the worst is more than a Petri dish of nonviable goo. The resulting creation, Dren, resembles a rabbit-cat-human infant at first (the visual effects are top notch), something downright huggable. They start off so cute….

The clever script and grounded performances — especially by Polley — convincingly sell the “good idea at the time” hubris of geniuses making horrible decisions. Polley’s Elsa is a multilayered person balancing an aversion to motherhood with deep-seated maternal yearnings.

Perhaps the film’s most interesting and nerve-jangling component is the evolving dynamic among the childless couple and their experiment-pet-baby-monster. The authenticity of that triangle is sure to generate some of the most uncomfortable laughter you’ll hear at a movie this year.

The film avoids cliché and has several effective reveals and genuinely funny moments, including one of the least-encouraging shareholder meetings ever. As the boss who is very worried, David Hewlett is hilariously unhappy. Delphine Chanéac, who plays Dren for most of the film, marries the behaviors of several animals with the emerging consciousness of a human being.

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“Splice” has echoes of “Aliens” and “Frankenstein,” but whatever components the film is sewn together from, it feels original. That’s largely because of the seriousness with which the characters and their qualms are explored. The film earns its freakiness: Director Vincenzo Natali and company have wisely realized that if situations and conflicts are believable first and foremost, the experience will be far more immersive — and intense — than the usual jumping-out-of-cupboards nonsense.

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Movie Review | 'Splice'

Careful, That Test Tube Might Be Incubating a Bouncing Baby Monster

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By Manohla Dargis

• June 3, 2010

The two recognizable stars of “Splice,” a pleasurably shivery, sometimes delightfully icky horror movie about love and monsters in the age of genetic engineering, are Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, a well-matched pair of earthbound oddities. Given their respective performative idiosyncrasies and, as important, their singularly nontraditional beauty, the pair’s casting immediately signals that the director Vincenzo Natali is after something different. With Ms. Polley and Mr. Brody on board, there’s a chance that despite the big-studio brands on the movie, you’re not headed into genre purgatory with the usual disposable plastic people who often populate (and perish in) mainstream horror. When these two bleed, you might actually care.

That’s a good thing, and it helps explain how “Splice” delivers for the horror movie fan who has grown weary of being suckered by films that promise new frights only to deliver the same old buckets of gore and guts. Ms. Polley and Mr. Brody play Clive and Elsa, live-in lovers and rock-star bio-engineers (they’re on the cover of Wired), who are creating new organisms from the DNA of different animals. The money bankrolling them comes from a pharmaceutical outfit, one of those shady corporations that occasionally foot the bill in movies of this sort. Such is the case in “The Fly,” David Cronenberg’s 1986 film, another cautionary tale about genetic mayhem that Mr. Natali appears to have absorbed into his own aesthetic DNA.

The Cronenberg influence here is evident in Mr. Natali’s interest in the body and birth and in an initially subdued, near-narcoleptic atmosphere that helps build a nice sense of foreboding. “Splice” opens with Clive and Elsa ushering their latest entity into the world, an event partly shot from the newborn’s point of view. “He’s so cute,” Elsa says, beaming. The he is a writhing, vaguely penile blob, Fred, which is soon introduced to a second blob, Ginger. (Mr. Natali, who wrote the script with Antoinette Terry Bryant and Doug Taylor, likes his allusions: Clive is most likely a homage to Colin Clive, who played Dr. Frankenstein in James Whale’s “Bride of Frankenstein,” with Elsa Lanchester as the memorably shocked betrothed.)

Although Fred’s point-of-view shot might seem like a throwaway, it’s fundamental to Mr. Natali’s design. Point-of-view shots don’t necessarily put you in a character’s (in this case, metaphoric) shoes, but because they let you see what a character sees, allowing you to share his or her perspective, they can create a sense of empathy for the character. In this case, though, empathy with Fred seems less the point than what it is we see through his eyes: Clive and Elsa, fully masked and dressed in laboratory clothes, working in the slightly sickly greenish light of a laboratory bought and paid for by a big company playing at God. This is the vision of Clive and Elsa that Mr. Natali wants you to remember, despite all that comes next.

And my, what a lot of unnerving fun comes next, including a spectacular splash of blood, a fall from grace, some true relationship talk and an impulsive, cataclysmically wrongheaded decision. Fred and Ginger, alas, make an abrupt exit, leaving Clive and Elsa close to losing their funds. Inspiration strikes, and a new creature is born, a real doozy that’s initially christened H-50 and, after some growing pains (for everyone), Dren. A sensational, vividly realistic being, Dren is a seamless amalgam of computer-generated effects, mechanical effects and human performance — played as a child by Abigail Chu and as an adult by Delphine Chanéac — that scuttles, slithers and vaults into the horror cinema annals. A mutant is born.

Mr. Natali handles Dren’s eerie entrance into the world with near-flawless timing and a thickening air of dread. Working with Robert Munroe (the visual-effects supervisor) and Howard Berger (special makeup and creature effects), Mr. Natali has fashioned a creature that, with her tail, skinned-chicken legs and cleft head alternately looks as harmless as a bunny and like something that might leap out from Ridley Scott’s “Alien” (or, scarier yet, a David Lynch film). Still, for Elsa, Dren is no mere experiment: she’s a test-tube baby, one that comes with the emotional and psychological weight of an in-utero conception. And the bigger Dren gets — she soon grows arms that hug Elsa tight — the deeper the bond between the two and the greater the trouble for Elsa and Clive.

Watching Dren develop — from newt to child to va-va-va-voom adult — you understand why “Splice” attracted the support of the director Guillermo del Toro, one of its seven executive producers. Mr. Natali, whose earlier films include “Cube,” hasn’t reinvented the horror genre. But with “Splice” he has done the next best thing with an intelligent movie that, in between its small boos and an occasional hair-raising jolt, explores chewy issues like bioethics, abortion, corporate-sponsored science, commitment problems between lovers and even Freudian-worthy family dynamics. The shivers might often outweigh the scares, and Mr. Natali loses his way in the last half-hour. Yet working with actors who make you care and a neo-Frankenstein creation that touchingly does, too, he has become one of the genre’s new great fright hopes.

“Splice” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It’s scary.

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Directed by Vincenzo Natali; written by Mr. Natali, Antoinette Terry Bryant and Doug Taylor, based on a story by Mr. Natali and Ms. Bryant; director of photography, Tetsuo Nagata; edited by Michele Conroy; music by Cyrille Aufort; production designer, Todd Cherniawsky; costumes by Alex Kavanagh; produced by Steven Hoban; released by Warner Brothers Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes.

WITH: Adrien Brody (Clive Nicoli), Sarah Polley (Elsa Kast), Abigail Chu (Young Dren) and Delphine Chanéac (Adult Dren).

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• Warner Bros. Pictures

Summary A dark vision of the world of genetic engineering in which two young scientists become superstars by splicing different animal DNA to create fantastical new creatures. Ignoring legal and ethical boundaries, the scientists, who are romantically involved, introduce human DNA into their experiment and risk the dawn of a terrifying new era. ... Read More

Directed By : Vincenzo Natali

Written By : Vincenzo Natali, Antoinette Terry Bryant, Doug Taylor

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Clive nicoli, sarah polley, delphine chanéac, brandon mcgibbon, gavin nicoli, simona maicanescu, joan chorot, david hewlett, william barlow, abigail chu, doug hicton, critic reviews.

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Splice Review

23 Jul 2010

103 minutes

The characters in Splice are named after actors in James Whale’s Bride Of Frankenstein; an indication of the approach writer/director Vincenzo Natali (Cube, Cypher) took to the subject of artificial life. Like Mary Shelley, Natali is concerned with scientific ethics — intensified in the 21st century by corporate sponsorship and demand for profitable products from expensive research — but equally troubled by the unique relationship Frankenstein and the monster may have. Signalled by a mid-film location shift from antiseptic corporate lab to run-down Gothic farm, sci-fi turns to horror as the personal failings of the creators and the created lead (inevitably) to violent clashes.

For the most part, this is a complex character drama: Elsa (Sarah Polley), who has seemingly put her own horrible childhood behind her, resists having a baby with Clive (Adrien Brody), but is eager for her experiment to become a daughter, though she is as flustered by Dren’s extreme metamorphoses and mood-swings as any mother of a tearaway teen. The centrepiece of any Frankenstein film is the monster, and Dren is extraordinary, portrayed by Delphine Chanéac with CGI augmentations. Sprouting wings or gills, with a deadly barb at the end of her prehensile tail, Dren feels as real as Karloff’s Monster. Natali plays expertly on our sympathies as the plot takes a darker tone — this is a horror movie in which we are as afraid of what will happen to the monster as of what she will do to other people.

Frankenstein’s crime was not loving his monster. This film asks what may happen if a mad scientist loves the creation; the creature shyly adores the labcoats who have bred her, but is still capable of jealous anger. There are as many heartfelt, emotional scenes as acute horror moments. An oddly disjointed third act offers more conventional action/horror but feels curtailed (major plot points, even characters, get swallowed between scenes) and less poignant than the build-up.

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