The icy locations of the Canadian landscape enhance the chilly atmosphere no end in this intelligent and sardonically witty spin on Mary Shelley's famous monster yarn. 'Cube' director Vincenzo Natali's latest creep-show is a refreshing throwback to the smart, body-shock prosthetics of 1980's David Cronenberg , and in particular, his remake of 'The Fly'.
Named after two actors in James Whale's 1935 classic 'Bride of Frankenstein', cool-geeks Clive & Elsa (Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley) are bedfellow 'mad' scientists who secretly splice together human and animal DNA to create a new species. The resulting creature - Dren (Delphine Chaneac) - evolves at an alarming rate into a chrome-domed woman with wings, gills and a very nasty sting at the end of her tail.
After being moved from her laboratory birthplace to the derelict farmhouse of Elsa's childhood, Dren ups the ambiguity stakes with increasingly unpredictable and dangerous behaviour, signalling that things might not end too well.
Rather impressively, 'Splice' covers a lot of ground in its 103 minutes, successfully placing issues of ethical boundaries, motherhood, 'teenage-angst' and bureaucratic hampering under the microscope, whilst still finding plenty of room for eye-opening set-pieces, such as a botched and bloody demonstration involving two phallic abominations named 'Fred & Ginger', and a truly alarming sexual liaison in a dusty barn between the creator and their creation. Very naughty.
The shift from sci-fi thriller to full-on horror movie is a relatively successful one, although it must be said that the climax could have been a lot tighter and eventful, suffering as it does from some slack pacing and muted dynamics. A tad more grue and gore wouldn't have gone amiss.
On the whole though, this is a thoughtful, well acted, genre piece with enough nifty moves and latex-stretching gross-outs to make it well worth your time.
Named after two actors in James Whale's 1935 classic 'Bride of Frankenstein', cool-geeks Clive & Elsa (Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley) are bedfellow 'mad' scientists who secretly splice together human and animal DNA to create a new species. The resulting creature - Dren (Delphine Chaneac) - evolves at an alarming rate into a chrome-domed woman with wings, gills and a very nasty sting at the end of her tail.
After being moved from her laboratory birthplace to the derelict farmhouse of Elsa's childhood, Dren ups the ambiguity stakes with increasingly unpredictable and dangerous behaviour, signalling that things might not end too well.
Rather impressively, 'Splice' covers a lot of ground in its 103 minutes, successfully placing issues of ethical boundaries, motherhood, 'teenage-angst' and bureaucratic hampering under the microscope, whilst still finding plenty of room for eye-opening set-pieces, such as a botched and bloody demonstration involving two phallic abominations named 'Fred & Ginger', and a truly alarming sexual liaison in a dusty barn between the creator and their creation. Very naughty.
The shift from sci-fi thriller to full-on horror movie is a relatively successful one, although it must be said that the climax could have been a lot tighter and eventful, suffering as it does from some slack pacing and muted dynamics. A tad more grue and gore wouldn't have gone amiss.
On the whole though, this is a thoughtful, well acted, genre piece with enough nifty moves and latex-stretching gross-outs to make it well worth your time.
