I can't tell you how excited that I was when Rich said he picked up the movie Splice from the Red Box. I have been so excited to see it and didn't even decide that it was complete and utter SHIT until the credits rolled at the end, so no one can say that I didn't give this movie more than a fair chance.
It is a movie about a young scientist couple, specializing in splicing animal and plant DNA for medical and pharmaceutical uses (and they have a title like splicologists or something), who is trying to get permission from the board who funds their program to approve introducing human DNA into an experiment. When the board refuses, Elsa and Clive create this animal/human hybrid splice in private. Elsa obviously wears the pants in the relationship and Clive does everything that she asks and she is the one who pushes the whole thing, and you find out later that she uses her own human DNA which only allows you to believe that she has serious mother/daughter issues, since she doesn't want children at all, just pets with her own DNA. As they become completely consumed with their hybrid pet/child thing, their lab (N.E.R.D.) is failing miserably at the task that the board has given them to find where the protein is coming from that is so helpful (which is the reason for the whole experiment). They are experimenting on Ginger and Fred who are a male and female pair of plant/animal splices that look like big nasty blobs of flesh. They had noticed that Ginger's estrogen levels had dropped, but didn't realize until their huge science conference that Ginger had actually turned into a male when Fred and Ginger kill each other and splatter blood on a crowd full of other scientists (not a very good impression).
After the major set back, the lab is being taken over by the big bosses who are funding the program and in order to protect their secrecy, Dren, their animal/human hybrid (whose name, btw, comes from their lab's name backwards) has to be moved to Elsa's farm, which used to belong to her dead mother (there is DEFINITELY a weird, fucked-up back story which I kept waiting for them to explain, which they NEVER did. Her mother was crazy, and now she's dead, and Elsa has issues, and that's all they EVER let you know!) Dren is growing at a rate of days in minutes, so her life is rapidly progressing before their eyes. They have by this time discovered that she can breath under water, and has wings hidden away under her skin, and blah blah blah. In earlier days, Dren had favored Elsa, like you would a mother, and despised Clive, who did actually try to kill her once and tried to talk Elsa out of ever creating her in the first place, but as she reaches what would be her teenage years, that is if she aged in years, she begins to resent Elsa and favor Clive, but not like a father. She seduces Clive, and Elsa walks in as they're having sex. Elsa is disgusted that Clive has cheated (and with something that wasn't even human) and they have a big fight, but agree to settle their differences and deal with Dren. They return to the farm to find her sick and dying. She dies soon after, at which time they dig a hole and bury her, only to have her come back to life as a man, at which time she kills Clive, rapes Elsa, and then gets killed by Elsa.
In the last scene, Elsa is giving the board the right to further the study. They offer her a lot of money, which she accepts, then she stands to reveal she is pregnant, which insinuates that furthering the study would mean studying her unborn hybrid incest child which I find absolutely disgusting.
The acting wasn't great. The story line was flaky. The details were a bit outrageous. They didn't define the characters well at all. You never understand where Elsa's mother issues come from, or why Clive is a freak who likes hybrid women (I say she seduced him, but basically she kissed him and he pulled his pants down), or how Elsa can forgive her boyfriend of 7 years for cheating with her half random-animal daughter in one conversation, or how Dren thinks or feels at all, or why Elsa was so adamant about keeping Dren to herself, to study by herself, but she's willing to sell her unborn, inbred child for science. Even in a science fiction movie where the plot is unbelievable, the characters should be believable.
I give this movie a 1 out of 5.
No comments:
Post a Comment