Genetic engineering; drama; love; NERD references; weird bald women with dangerous tail-looking things.
Welcome to the world of Splice, the horror comedy of the year.
Let’s face it: science fiction nerds have caught themselves drooling over screen-appealing female space aliens and monsters for years. It probably began when Captain Kirk first had sex with the green slave chick in Star Trek. Even people who never saw the scene have heard about that love-in.
Later on, Natasha Henstridge came into the sci-fi circuit with her depiction of Sil, a sex-crazed alien/humanoid man-eater, in Species. Many believe that this movie first spawned the notion that if there was ever a good way to go out, it would be during sex…with a boney-looking alien straight from a painting by HR Giger.
Then recently, countless fan-boys began re-watching Avatar in the hopes of catching Zoe Saldana bare a breast, since she seemed half-naked throughout the movie. Blue skin and four times the size of a human? Bah, who needs to be picky. This is a generation of fan-boys that watched the Snoo-Snoo episode of Futurama and thought, “Hey, that probably wouldn’t be too bad.”
Which brings us to Splice.
The movie starts out fairly well. Two bio-chemists, Clive Nicoli and Elsa Kast (played by Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley), are in the midst of a huge scientific breakthrough: the merging of the genetic code of every single animal class, except human. They have created male and female versions of what look like giant bloody sponges that move around on their own and create some sort of protein that will be used in pharmaceuticals. The scientists, of course, want to go further, and add human DNA to the mix. The company says, “No dice.” The scientists do it anyway, and create an ugly-looking gerbil with a wicked tail that, through nurturing and caring, evolves into Billy Corgan (played by Delphine Chanéac) at an accelerated aging rate.
The storyline is very thought-provoking, as Clive and Elsa struggle with the moralistic principles of using human DNA to create an organism, hopes for their future together, and some deep skeletons in the family history. You see the struggles of these people, both internally and externally, as their relationship with Billy Corgan (I mean, DREN) evolves.
Sounds intense, right? Well, it is. Until Adrien Brody decides to have sex with it.
Yes, in an apparent loss of judgement, Adrien Brody gets horny, and destroys any semblance of a serious movie by banging his creation, which is almost like his daughter, making it even more perverted. After that, I couldn’t stop laughing whenever he came on-screen (mmph).
Not only does he have sex with DREN, but he gets caught by his screen wife, Sarah Polley. Then he returns home and tries to explain his way out of cheating on her with their mutant spawn. AND IT WORKS!!!!
From here on out the movie is pure comedy, as you can’t help but giggle at Adrien Brody. It ends with DREN turning into a male, raping his mom Sarah Polley (who we learn used her own DNA to construct DREN), and getting pregnant.
I don’t know where I thought this movie was going to go when it was good, but it sure wasn’t here.
I give the movie 2 out of 5 Natasha Henstridge aliens. Everyone else seems to be giving this movie 4 out of 5. Everyone else seems to have mommy and daddy issues, so… there’s that.
