This is a movie review for "Splice", released October 06, 2009 in Spain at the Sitges International Festival of Fantastic and Horror Cinema. I watched this with a friend on October 27, 2020.
Trailer
Genre
Horror, Sci-Fi
Cast
Adrien Brody - Clive Nicoli
Sarah Polley - Elsa Kast
Delphine Chaneac - Dren
David Hewlett - William Barlow
Abigail Chu - Child Dren
Plot
Genetic engineering is always looking at what can be done. Two genetic scientists are looking to make creatures that have never existed before but, after one experiment catastrophically failed in front of a live audience, their funding was cut. They continued onwards with their experiments, secretly, splicing human DNA in with one of the experiments. Right when they thought it would be a waste, a creature survived. How is the human DNA going to affect the creature? Will it be intelligent? Can it understand things or thoughts or feelings? How is it going to grow? How human will it be? Where is the boundary to what it is and what it can do?
Rating Criteria
0/5 – No value whatsoever. Absolute waste of time.
1/5 – Barely worth any time.
2/5 – Pathetic but has a bit of something to hold the attention a little.
3/5 – Somewhat kept the attention but could definitely have used more.
4/5 – Good, but not awe-strikingly amazing. Could have maybe used a bit more to the movie.
5/5 – Go see it! Wonderful movie all around. – characters, music, theme, story line, etc.
2/5 - *SPOILERS*
I thought this would be an interesting movie, hence choosing to watch this. The science behind creating these creatures was definitely intriguing but the ethical questioning (about whether or not we should do this) was barely touched. True, this is just a movie but movies have to ask hard questions that are sometimes near impossible to bring up in the real life: What is possible? How far can we go? Where is the boundary? How much of playing "like God" is allowable? What are the consequences?
The movie went away from these questions and decided to go another route. Sex sells so let's make the creature (named Dren) sexual. We don't know how DNA can change anatomy (like "Jurassic Park"'s dinosaurs changing genders due to frog DNA because of the need to procreate), but this movie decided to watch the creature growing up and becoming sexual.
The creatures that caused scientists Elsa and Clive to lose their funding had originally been one female and one male. One of the creatures had lost estrogen and had changed genders, but no one noticed until the two were literally fighting each other with their fangs to kill each other in a bloody disaster. Despite this, Elsa and Clive continued with their experiments, added human DNA, and *DIDN'T* watch out for indications of the gender change issue happening again! I am frustrated at this. Scientists should be watching out for flaws they had seen in previous test subjects / experiments, but these guys were just all gung ho for the newest experiment that they forgot to watch out for this. So of course, Dren grows up as a female creature and starts taking a sexual interest in Clive. That, combined with the fact that Elsa was just so obsessed with learning about and raising Dren that she didn't pay attention to her boyfriend/partner Clive, made Clive more inclined to get freaky with the alien-human hybrid. There is talk that they may have used Elsa's DNA for the splicing so that might be another reason why he was okay to get some freak on, but wtf.
But it doesn't stop there!!
Dren changed genders, becoming more male, then wanted to take Elsa. As if one human partner wasn't enough! So male Dren kills Clive, Clive's brother, and their boss. This is probably because of two reasons: to be able to copulate with Elsa, the other males needed to be taken out of the picture, and for self-preservation.
Anyways, as male Dren gets to copulate with Elsa, Clive tries to save her, gets killed by Dren, and then Elsa kills Dren. We then, at the very end, see Elsa pregnant (supposedly with Dren's child?). How is that supposed to make one feel? Is this right, to continue a hybrid's bloodline? Would it be better to kill it off, ethically? Or would the "sacrifice" of all the deaths be "wasted" if you aborted that creature-child?
This is something to think on:
I agree with what this Director has to say about movie bringing things to light to question, but does that make this a good film? Maybe, maybe not. That is speculative.
Is this a movie for everyone? No. Is it watchable? Yes. Should you watch it? That's up to you. I do not regret watching this though it won't be high on the re-watch list. I am glad that I got another view into this topic but there's much more to watch other than this.
That's my movie review. Thank you for reading! More reviews will come eventually.
~ R
Contact me?
Twitter X @gracie_delunac
Email graciemaedelunac@yahoo.com
Facebook https://facebook.com/GracieMaeDeLunac/
Skype gracelyn2019@yahoo.com
No comments:
Post a Comment