![]() ![]() Realign the diggihoop proton volnoid acid.” Scientific things. It’s fun to watch their faces in the blue-gray half-light as they stick long needles into amniotic sacs and stare into computer screens and mutter things like, “Why isn’t it taking?” and “Wait - I think I’ve got it. So Clive and Elsa think: Why not mix in human DNA and see what grows? Just to, you know, prove we can. But then company bigwigs order them to stop researching and start generating capital. In Splice, Canada’s own Sarah Polley and skinny-faced Adrien Brody play Clive and Elsa, celebrated nerd-dreamboat scientists for a pharmaceutical company - called, as it happens, NERD, for “Nucleic Exchange Research Development.” When we meet them, they’re delivering a new life-form from a pulsing ovum in an incubator - a giant wormy mass from which they hope to mine all kinds of patent-worthy medical procedures. (Revenge-of-the-repressed stories work especially well in cold climes full of white people.) And these mutant cells have a metaphorical component, as much a product of repressed emotions as liberated biochemistry. It makes you think that Ontario horror has practically become a subgenre, with its faceless, sterile modern settings, wintry and blue-lit, in which new kinds of flesh are grown or hatched. It’s David Cronenberg Lite - a dash of The Brood, a soupcon of The Fly - but that’s not a bad thing. In the context of modern horror, a solid B-movie like Vincenzo Natali’s Splice looks positively splendiferous, with a mixture of icky and poignant and terrifying that works like gangbusters. But mostly we get zombies, splatter, torture porn, zombies, lame remakes, zombies. Eventually, you lash out, and your mother figure decides to take away any agency you have by strapping you to a table and treating you like the experiment you are.Given all the gene-mapping and cloning these days, you’d think movies would be lousy with Frankenstein scenarios and cautionary tales in which technology outpaces our understanding of how to employ it. You do things you don't realize are wrong, and every time you do, your mother figure scolds you, creating a bigger divide between someone who used to nurture you. Then, as you get older, you see your father figure as a potential mate, without having the true sentience to recognize how messed up it is. Imagine the movie from Dren's perspective you're an experiment struggling between humanity and your natural instincts, raised by two scientists who you think are nice at first, and they try to instill human behaviors into you that simply won't stick. ![]() Even with Dren's eventual Face–Heel Turn, what happens in her/his life is still deeply disturbing, particularly since it all starts with Dren being raised by two scientists with no idea what they're dealing with.And all of that is before she actually becomes dangerous. While she borders on being Ugly Cute, she has backwards legs, a skin colored tail with a stinger, and black eyes that are WAY too spread apart, which can make still images of her look unsettling. Dren's physical appearance dips right into the Uncanny Valley.While nowhere as graphic as when Dren assaults Elsa, it's still a scientist having sex with his pseudo-daughter and is fully aware that she doesn't recognize how messed up the situation is due to her animalistic nature. On another note, Clive having sex with Dren is disturbing on a different level. ![]() The fact that it's the only time that Dren says anything without the aid of Scrabble blocks in the entire movie certainly doesn't help. When Dren speaks just before raping Elsa.Dren heartlessly killing the cat she became friends with just to spite Elsa.Ginger and Fred killing each other, after Ginger turns into a male and they fight for dominance. ![]() As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. ![]()
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