Film Review: Splice

Well this all looks to be in order.

 'Splice' is the romantic story of the love affair between Adrien Brody and a genetically modified butterbean.

I know, I know: how very old hat. The Director, Vincenzo Natali, manages to keep it fresh though. He keeps it fresh by, uh, well by weaving in themes of incest, quasi-bestiality, patricide, matricide and awkward-beyond-measure sex. Like I said, it's very romantic.

Romantic.

The butterbean (played by a post-rehab Lindsay Lohan) turns in an excellent performance as 'Splice', or as her creators insist on calling her, as 'Dren'. Did you know that 'Dren' is 'Nerd' spelt backwards. No? Well now you do.

Dren.

A butterbean.

Dren is manufactured in a lab by two gloomy emo scientists; Adrien Brody ('Clive') and that frowny chick from the 'Dawn of the Dead' remake ('Elsa'). Sarah Polley! That's her. Elsa has managed to escape the oppressive confines of a zombie-surrounded shopping mall to re-invent herself as a frowny Geneticist, and she and hubby Clive are busy genetically engineering what looks to me like a morbidly obese Witchetty Grub in their lab.

Witchetty grub or just a really awkward dump? You decide.

 The Witchetty Grub has been created by intermingling the genetic identities of several different species of animal. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: this is definitely going to end well. And it DOES end well. It ends well if you like watching fathers and daughters have sex. So, that's all of us then.

DREN: 'You'll call me, right?'
CLIVE: 'Uh, yeah. I'll, uh, I'll definitely call you'.

The morbidly obese Witchetty Grub isn't generating protein synthesis like Elsa originally hoped it would. Boo! What do we want? Protein Synthesis! When do we want it? Now!


Listen here, obese Witchetty Grub.
I pay you to synthesise protein, not to sit around watching Four on Demand all day, kay? Kay?

A wormery is a great way to keep your broody girlfriend occupied.
You know, so that she doesn't go and genetically engineer some kind of animal-human hybrid
like a crazy-ass bitch.

 Because the Witchetty Grub is a total fail, Elsa decides to have a baby instead. No, wait, that's right. She doesn't decide to have a baby, she decides to use her own DNA and the DNA of a butterbean to create some kind of frowny human-butterbean hybrid. It's what we all would have done in her position. Probably.

Human-butterbean hybrids: Good for synthesising protein.

Elsa is hoping that the human-butterbean hybrid will be better at 'synthesising protein' than the lazy Witchetty Grub. I'm not sure what sort of scientific research background Elsa has, but I think the answer to this is probably 'none'.

Totally worth it.

The plan is to terminate the human-butterbean hybrid early on, but Elsa sort of forgets. You know how it is; one minute you are genetically engineering a new lifeform, and then...um....oh forget it. You know what?  She is a total fucktard.

Silly Elsa!

To be fair to Elsa, the human-butterbean hybrid is having none of that 'abortion' nonsense. Instead, it comes to term much earlier than anticipated and Elsa and Clive are sort of stuck with their creation.
Frankenstein, anyone?

Oh fuck.

SARAH: 'She takes after her father'.
ADRIEN: 'What? No she doesn't! Fuck you!'

Sarah and Adrien bring up their little baby butterbean in the lab. You would think, wouldn't you, that one of their fellow 'Scientists' would notice something? Would notice something like a genetically engineered animal-human hybrid toddling around the lab? But no one does.

Dren does the whole 'incognito' thing.

Dren spends her days in the lab squeaking like a rabid hamster, behaving timidly, eating sugary liquids and running away from Mom an' Dad. Clive tries to kill her a couple of times, but apart from that he's a really good Dad. The mutated butterbean appears to be growing at an alarming rate, and for the first time it appears to occur to Elsa that playing God is not such a good idea after all.

Hello boys and girls.
My name is 'Progress'.

 After a little while, Elsa and Clive decide to move Dren away from the lab and into a large shed. You know the sort of shed! The sort of shed which is specially adapted for housing animal-human hybrids developed by irresponsible fictitious 'scientists'!


A common or garden shed is a great place
to raise a homicidal-maniac, animal-human hybrid.
Especially if that hybrid is a bit rapey and has itchy feet.

It isn't really explained why Dren is moved into the shed. Why can't they just keep her in the house? Elsa makes some lame excuse about Dren 'being seen' when Clive protests, but I think the truth is that Elsa is just really houseproud.

Elsa: surprisingly houseproud for a sociopath.

They move Dren into the shed after Clive's brother runs into Dren in the lab one day. Clive's brother says something along the lines of: 'What the fuck, guys?', and in response Clive and Elsa say: 'Science is up. Progress is up, MoFo!' and this seems to placate Clive's brother quite alot. It concerns me that Clive and Elsa seem to view 'science' as a catch-all response to questions of morality and ethical reasoning, but I guess I'm just a silly ol' square that way.

CLIVE: 'Say Sarah. Do you think that maybe what we are doing is wrong?'
ELSA: 'Shut the fuck up you prissy cunt'.

Dren gets settled into her nice new shed and begins to grow up. She gets a nice cat and starts engaging in all those activities which teenagers tend to do at that age: listening to music, dancing, experimenting with make-up and fashion, and having sex with her Dad.

Maybe some more foundation?

Dren begins to display sexually aggressive behavior, just like a normal teenage human-hybrid does. She starts by attempting to murder her own mother (ooh, naughty!) and then follows it up by stabbing Clive to death and brutally raping Elsa. Did I mention that Dren changes sex half-way through the film? Yuh.

This party sucks y'all. I'm going to kill my Dad and rape my Mom to liven things up a bit.

Anyway, so in the end Elsa kills Dren. She kills her own child. Seriously, what kind of fucking family is this?

Hey there Motherfuckers! Guess what? I'm a total bitch!

Even Leatherface would turn these cunts down as prospective foster parents.

Fuck no! I'll stick with what I got!

Elsa is all on her lonesome now, and it's tough being single, right? Right. So to cheer herself up a bit she decides to give birth to an animal-human hybrid baby. We've all been there, honey. You go girlfriend!

Time for another one of these.

It's definitely time.

What could possibly go wrong?
Oh, that's right. Everything. Everything could go wrong. Again.
Dumb bitch.

 Elsa goes to her employer and explains about her little bundle of joy. Elsa's Boss doesn't seem particularly phased by the idea of another Rosemary's Baby situation, and offers Elsa a check to keep her and baby company during the gestation period. And Elsa takes the cheque, because she is a dumb bitch. Try not to judge her though; the current economic situation has been tough on us all.

This time its gonna be different.
Stop laughing! It is!

So what have we learnt from 'Splice'?

• Don't fuck your Mum and Dad: it's just rude.
• A bald head does not look good on a chick: animal-human hybrid or not.
• Dren likes cats some days, and doesn't like cats on other days.
• Adrien Brody would make a truly excellent Emo.
• Vincenzo Natali has failed in his mission to make incest cool.
• Men will fuck anything if the opportunity presents itself. A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G.
The sequel is definitely going to be worth a look.