Main Image: 

Published: 22 July 2010
by DAN CARRIER

MAD scientist has a secret plan to use brilliance to solve one of the world’s big problems. But they are so full of their own genius they get ahead of themselves and play God. Something goes wrong, and terror is unleashed. 

How many movies fit this basic criteria? The history of cinema is littered with them, from Boris Karloff as Frankenstein to The Fly. Even Back To The Future was based on a play on this premise. This science-gone-wrong theme has lots of predecessors. Yet it works well. 

While it means the basic plot for this new B-movie starring the always watchable Adrien Brody is a case of been there, done that, it doesn’t detract from this being a brilliant offering.

Clive (Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) are leading geneticists and bio-engineers, working for a pharmaceutical company who are splicing together all manner of primordial goo to create compounds that will help beat diseases. They are top of the class, and are developing quasi-animals that they can harvest proteins from – until the childless, work-dominated couple decide to take their work one step further and inject human DNA into some of their lab-born “creatures” to see if they can take it up a notch and find the cure for cancers. 

What emerges from their lab fishtanks is a “thing” that develops and grows in a remarkable way, and, while offering the scientists a fascinating study, it also raises a series of questions about the medical ethics involved, and furthermore becomes a surrogate child for the pair. We know things are bound to go wrong, and to this film’s credit, as the plot unfolds it gets splendidly kooky and weird. 

Simple, staple horror film tricks give it an edge. There is a dark and damp wood, with spindly trees and stinking rotting leaves, a bog to get sucked in to and pale moonlight casting terrible shadows everywhere. But it’s not all lightening flashes splitting darkened skies. It is funny, too. At one point, we watch Clive blow the dust off an old Dixieland jazz LP and put the needle on the record. It smacks of the film Witness, where Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis dance to Sam Cooke’s Wonderful World. It’s a super play on a great scene, instantly recognisable, and it adds to the black humour.

Brody says he was attracted to the film by its Arthur C Clarke-style sense that this type of thing is not as outlandish as you would first believe.

“What takes place in this movie is not too far from the truth,” he said.

“We’re living in a world in which science fiction is becoming reality, and that gives this film its weight. It is frightening to a certain extent, to see how precarious things can be, but also exciting because there is potential for wonderful things.”

While he may say that this gives Splice its impetus, the facts are it could have been about treating gout in little green space monsters and would still work. It’s spooky, occasionally silly, and rather grim in places: so good stuff, then.