Film Number 32 – Splice
About 8 years ago I pretty much reached my limit with giant blockbuster films, I still watch many movies with unfathomable budgets but after viewing 2002’s Die Another Day I finally realized that there had to be something more out there. James Bond movies had been a giant part of my early adolescence satisfying my need for action, adventure, explosions and beautiful women; Die Another Day had taken all of these necessities and made them shit.
I started quickly, consuming smaller films, better written films, different genres, world cinema, finding lots of new filmmakers to latch onto and follow. I had always watched smaller films mainly comedies but I rarely bothered to watch those down and dirty movies made on shoestring budgets. Obviously I had seen the past greats that were made for peanuts - The Night of the Living Dead, Repo Man, Mad Max, Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Terminator etc, but in terms of contemporary independent film, it was something that I was always quite skeptical of.
It really only took me a few to realize the qualities that independent films have to offer, mostly if a movie cannot be commercially viable it doesn’t get made, or at least it doesn’t get made with a budget. My favorite independent films are ones which take this limited budget and push the scope of their ideas even further, thinking bigger and “outside of the box.”
Conveniently that idiom ties into the film that I feel utilizes all the strengths of independent filmmaking, what some people would call the perfect independent film. Vincenzo Natali’s 1997 debut Cube has more story and concept then you would normally expect from a film costing less than four hundred thousand Canadian dollars. The location is a giant puzzle box made up of Cubed rooms which are either safe or contain death in a grim horrible way. It features a few characters that have no idea why they have woken up in this deadly labyrinth and they all have to band together to escape. In true Night of the Living Dead fashion not all of the characters are friendly and the people start becoming as deadly as the traps that they are trying to evade.
Anyway enough about Cube, it is a small independent masterpiece that should be seen. Today was another trip to the cinema to watch Vincenzo Natali’s newest film Splice. Since Cube I haven’t had the chance to watch any other of Natali’s films, he has mostly been making independent films since then and Splice is the biggest film he has ever made. So equipped with a real budget (although still quite modest at 26 million) Natali directs Adrian Brody and Sarah Polly as two hot shot genetic engineers who spice together different animals DNA to create new hybrids in the hope to use new proteins and methods to cure disease. Sarah Polley becomes annoyed and impatient with the slow progression of the experiment and decides that she must make a giant leap forward to splice Human and Animal DNA.
The result is a strange small rapidly aging creature, which starts to appear more like a small human girl day by day. Complete with a tail and progressive intelligence the creation is named Dren, Polly’s character begins to care for her as a daughter teaching her how to communicate, and disciplining her appropriately. As Dren begins to age, grow and develop Adrien Brody realizes that Polly has used her own DNA to create the hybrid. Brody and Polly’s relationship starts to fall apart as they differ on the ethical ramifications of their work. Dren starts becoming evil and the story plays out in very bizarre and original ways.
Reflecting on the film, I find myself in a strange place, on one hand it is scattered with problems, enough for me to just dismiss it as another shitty creature horror movie. However as I look at all the positives it becomes clear that this film is a very daring piece of film making. The film begins very slowly, boringly, it almost had me resigned checked out and asleep very quickly, moments were dull, even the birth of Dren was slow and unappealing. I started getting very invested when we see Dren as as a 5-6 year old being taught and fed and cared for like a regular human child. For me the movie begins here, the effects look flawless at these points, impressive and scary.
I’m not going to talk about the rest of the story because it gets to the places you expect it to but the journey there is very original and strange. The film feels a lot like a B-movie that you would expect to see from the 80’s.The Cronenberg comparisons are apt, there is that strange slightly tongue-in-cheek attitude to every scene. I found it very reminiscent of The Fly, there are these brutal moments of blood and gore that for some reason are just hysterical, it is at times very inconsistent but this is a big strength. Somehow all these elements manage to work, a lot of that credit goes to the actors; Polly and Brody could have easily taken us out of every single scene and pissed us off to the max. But even as Brody begins to have sex with the now adult Dren; she is on top of him naked with her tail moving around, her back wings are fully extended, I am disgusted, repulsed, laughing hysterically with the audience but the moment never loses its believability somehow. I have no idea how they managed to sell that moment, sparking a mass cringe form the audience and then having Polly catch the two in the act it is a perfect moment of comedy, the two go into the scenes playing it mostly straight but allowing the right amount of comedy to come through. Delphine Chanéac who plays the creature Dren does a great job she makes this character full of subtle intricacies that show her humane side slowly coming through.
There is a lot to appreciate in this film, the horror genre has become a cauldron of remakes for the masses, I don’t know if you could call Splice completely original but it is defiantly a cinema experience that I haven’t had for a while. It manages to shock and repulse without feeling like cheap exploitation. It’s not normal for me to be so forgiving to a film with such a poor first and third act but Splice is one of those movies that makes you hopeful for the future, that maybe everyone out there isn’t just trying to make a very quick buck. Makes you wish for a time when a film didn’t need to be part of a pre established series, or video game, or dare I say it board game just to get made.
It is sad that this film wasn’t as solid and it could have been, a substantially higher budget than Cube but with a lesser scope, the events leading to the end of the film set it up for an explosive ending but the film just kind of goes out like the rest. The film isn’t doing much business which is sad but to be expected, it was marketed poorly like a simple creature feature. It isn’t mainstream and probably shouldn’t be released so widely but I’m sure that it will find a good audience and I hope that there is a better cut of it. Not perfect but better than most of what is out.
Score is 7 out of 10.
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