The movies that get the tag “Science Gone Wrong” on here are part of one of the longest lineages in the history of creature features—and probably one of that history’s most reactionary undercurrents, demonstrating a ceaseless anxiety about scientific discovery and experimentation. The deeper we dive into the mechanics of nature, the closer we get to inevitably crossing lines we were never meant to cross, with terrible consequences the equally inevitable result—or, that’s the way they see it, and it’s a structure and theme that has never really gone away, and manages to adapt itself to whatever the latest technological and scientific advances (although by “adapt to”, I don’t necessarily mean “understand.”) Splice is a film that very intentionally hearkens back to some of the more hysteria-prone versions of that Sci-Fi narrative, and even places it in the consistently hackle-raising field of genetic engineering, which has been the topic of more than a few monster movies over the decades. The innovation here is that the lines being crossed in this story are not necessarily being done in the name of science, but something far more personal—and so the ensuing terrible consequences have some different and sometimes more disturbing dimensions.
All throughout Splice, you are given cliche set-ups that don’t necessarily lead where you expect them to. Of course, the experiments in animal gene hybridization and designer organisms is being run by a shady corporation, whose office buildings consist of sterile labs shaded with blue and shadowy conference rooms—and our “superstar” geneticist couple, Elsa (award-winning director Sarah Polley, who we all know as one of the hospital moppets in Blue Monkey) and Clive (Adrien Brody) are not keen on sticking with their profit-driven orders. The two of them (named after the lead actors in Bride of Frankenstein in a move of jackhammer subtlety) combine their scientific acumen with the celebrity affectations of aughts tech gurus—they are on the cover of Wired magazine—with their greatest accomplishment being the creation of a matching male and female phallic flesh-worms full of medically-useful enzymes that their employers hope to harvest. They have their sights set on greater things, particularly moving on to using human DNA in their experiments, which the corporation doesn’t abide—not because of ethical concerns, which they bring up in only a cursory way, but because they want to start making money on the phallic flesh-worms ASAP and won’t fund projects that aren’t immediately profitable. The company CEO (Simona Maicanescu) literally tells them “no more monsters”, but it’s pretty clear that they prefer the monsters, so they decide to screw The Man and do their next-level splicing on their own time, but with the company’s equipment.
Despite Elsa arguing that their human DNA experiments could offer chances to deal with serious illnesses—a very Swamp Thing–style noble pursuit—it becomes evident early that they see those medical advances as more a side benefit to their incessant need to push the scientific envelope. It’s not just glory they’re seeking, though—Elsa is interested in having children, but is incapable on her own, and potentially sees this project as a substitute; Clive is more ambivalent about the whole thing, but keeps going along with Elsa’s increasingly boundary-crossing efforts, as a test to create a supposedly short-lived life form becomes something far less temporary. Despite portraying themselves as something of a power couple, it’s also clear that there are toxic elements to their relationship, with Elsa commandeering their decision-making while Clive hems and haws but does nothing, something that is called out by his scientist brother (Brandon McGibbon.) There are many points where he can put his foot down and end the experiment, but he chooses to argue loudly and not follow up on it with any meaningful action.
The result of their experiment with a human-animal bricolage and an artificial womb is a bald, kangaroo-limbed creature with a stinger in its tail (what species did they splice in to give it that? Who knows!), which Elsa immediately decides to care for, assuring Clive that it has an expedited life cycle that will end soon enough. Maybe unexpectedly to them, but less unexpected to anyone who has seen a Sci-Fi/horror movie before, the little thing that they call Dren (a reverse of their company’s initials) quickly grows and becomes increasingly human, changing into a little girl (Abigail Chu) and eventually into an adult (Delphine Chanéac) who displays a limited but inarguable intellect, but is still prone to defensive violence, making her presence in the corporation building a danger to all of them. By the time the couple move Dren to Elsa’s childhood home, a farmhouse out in the snowy countryside (which is bathed in a different light but honestly feels just as claustrophobic as the other sets), it also becomes increasingly obvious that Elsa is revelling in this sequence of events—finally giving her the child that she always wanted.
Elsa’s protectiveness of Dren, and her treatment of her as an actual human despite all her very obvious non-human qualities, initially sets her up in the role of off-kilter monster mother driven entirely by maternal instinct, an archetype you see in It’s Alive, The Brood, and Little Otik; you can even compare Clive to the father in Otik, an increasingly disturbed but spineless enabler. Director Vincenzo Natali (director of cult horror film Cube), who co-wrote the film with Atoinette Terry Bryant and Doug Taylor, was definitely aiming for Cronenberg here, so the similarities to The Brood are likely intentional (the starry-eyed introduction of phallic flesh-worms, and their later blood-splattered fate in front of a crowd of respectable business-types, feel like Cronenberg-style dark humour.) But once again, this team manages to zig when you expect them to zag, and the roles end up reversing.
The issues stem from the subtle intimations about Elsa’s relationship with her deceased mother, who was evidently overbearing and led Elsa to a lifetime of bitterness and spite. Dren, who she made using her own DNA, is her attempt to engineer someone with the childhood she never had (she even gives her a box of her beloved childhood possessions)—however, she ironically starts to become just as overbearing as her own mother, not listening to Dren when she communicates (using letter blocks) that being stuck in a barn leaves her bored and listless, which is just one of many restrictions that, not surprisingly, leave her monster daughter bitter and spiteful. This culminates with Elsa returning to cold scientific observer mode in an attempt to forcibly control her creation—as Clive points out, she thought that engineering a pseudo-child would make it less likely to rebel against her than a pure human one, and her disappointment turns her especially cruel (he also implies that emotional instability may be inherent in her family)
Once that misshapen dynamic begins to form, Clive is forced into the role of being the nicer, more permissive parental figure. This immediately reverses Dren’s initial ambivalence towards him that stemmed from, you know, all the times he attempted to murder her in her previous incarnations. That affection becomes increasingly disturbing over time, culminating in a man-on-monster sex scene that’s honestly weirder for not being even more awkward and sensationalist. The process of getting there, and the aftermath, paint Clive as believably confused about his own inclinations (given how openly creeped out he is when Dren starts getting provocative with him), making a rash action in a situation that had long spiralled out of control.
One of the key choices Natali and Co. make to keep this story interesting is to actually focus on Dren’s mutant psychology, as a being who sometimes has the twitchy reactions of a hyper-aware animal, other times shows the naivety of a child, but also develops a sense of self. Both Chu earlier in the movie and especially Chanéac are giving effective pantomime performances, selling both the human and unknowable alien sides of Dren through gestures and reactions that have to penetrate make-up and CGI overlays (among the effects crew is veteran make-up and effects guy Greg Nicotero, whose work we last saw in The Faculty.) The signs of intelligence from very early on give most of the human interactions with Dren a particularly distressing quality, as the production of even a remotely human organism boxes them into an ethical corner that they have little hope of escaping. Much like in Lamb, the scenes of Dren simply observing herself make her more sympathetic than the usual “thing that didn’t ask to be born” characterization, and despite showing some bizarre and violent behavioural patterns, she seems capable of reasoning and affection. We know that her physical capabilities, including the ability to grow wings, would allow her to escape her confinement with ease, but she is convinced not to because she does in fact want to be loved, especially by Clive…maybe a bit too much. Not surprisingly, it’s a very Frankenstein portrayal of an artificial being, and so it’s not surprising to see Frankenstein super-fan Guillermo del Toro on the list of producers.
It is a little unfortunate, then, that after giving us room to feel for Dren, the last twenty or so minutes become more of a horror movie and kind of toss that character development out in the process. It is not a sudden turn—Dren’s relationship with both Elsa and Clive builds towards catastrophe, and the earlier reveal that the phallic flesh-worms are capable of changing from female to male (which naturally makes them aggressive towards other males) brings in the made-up science. But the brutal “reborn” Dren who stalks our cast in the economically compact backwoods before queasily paralleling the earlier sex scene with Elsa, is more of an obvious nightmare scenario of genetic tinkering than the weirder emotional and moral questions raised by the rest of the movie. It’s all shot effectively, but you kind of hoped that they wouldn’t need to go in the all-out bloodbath direction, given their previously established capability of gussying up cliches. At the very least, the movie’s final coda recontextualizes the consequences of the climax in a way that paints them as more of a quiet tragedy, one that their corporate bosses get to conveniently benefit from.
Splice doesn’t always stick with its more interesting aspects all the way through (which is one of the reasons it doesn’t reach the heights of Cronenberg), but in its use of the exaggerated horror movie perils of genetic engineering, it still focuses more on how this stuff affects the people using it. Despite all the wider implications of the leads’ abuse of advanced science (and their employers’ purely self-serving approach to it, which is only commented on in a glancing way), what’s more disturbing is the idea that very human frailties would end up reflected in the work. The ability to create unnatural life was the greatest horror some older monster movies could imagine—this shows that even greater horrors can happen when we get our emotions involved.
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