Splice

Splice tells the story of what can happen when humans decide to “play God” by toying with life forms and creating new living beings.

Given that genetic engineering has already been successfully used with different breeds of animals (the first one was Dolly the sheep) what happens in this movie isn’t that hypothetical.  As a matter of fact, while there are strict bans on some kinds of genetic engineering (specifically, anything dealing with human DNA) in the US and Europe, I can totally picture a multinational running these experiments somewhere in the world where they can escape prying eyes as well as ethical and legal checks.

The gist: two very young and brilliant scientists splice together the genetic material collected from different species’ DNA to create a creature that has the best characteristics of each species.  The goal is a creature that could in turn help discover new types of medicines and compounds that could generate billions for the company paying for the research.

When the couple are told that their work needs to become profitable or their research will be shut down, they decide to buck the ethical dilemmas and secretly splice together human and animal DNA.  The experiment gives birth to Dren, a female creature that displays traits from all the creatures whose DNA was spliced together.

The movie is just average but is ultimately sufficiently enjoyable.  The problem I had was that it required the audience to suspend its disbelief a bit too much.  For instance, while one of the two scientists isn’t fully on board with crossing the ethical divide, he never does anything of substance to slow the process down or put a stop to it, in spite of the dangers that anyone could easily imagine.

Other things were too far fetched or too convenient as well, which in the end brought the overall grade down.  Technically, the movie is very well made.  Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley are both good, but it’s Delphine Chanéac who shines in the part of Dren, helped in no small part by the excellent makeup and visual effects.

I read that because of the recent writers’ strike in Hollywood, a lot of scripts were cursorily greenlit simply to ensure that the market wouldn’t dry up and that a steady stream of films would hit theaters.  Given the fact that the script seems a little rushed, I’d venture to say that this is one of those half baked movies approved as fillers.

Anyway, Splice is a generic enough movie that it can be easily watched on DVD or skipped altogether.

Grade: 6