Ever watch a movie one time and say, "Yeah, this was good," then watch it again and you have an abrupt turnaround on opinion? It can happen. Perhaps you are at a different place in your life that frames the film differently. Or maybe you just notice things you didn't notice before that rubbed you wrong.
Me...I guess I just get icked out by viscera combined with quasi-incest.
This film is directed by Vincenzo Natali, who directs some fine relatively low budget science fiction, including Nothing and the simply incredible film Cube, which has to be one of the most effective films in being a class on how to use a single, simple set. This one, Splice, with a much bigger budget and many more locations, not to mention a much bigger name cast (Adrian Brody) as well as Natali's stable standby David Hewlett (Stargate's Rodney McKay) put forth this story. And let us not forget the admittedly amazing Delphine Chaneac as the sinister and tragic creature, Dren.
The idea is a biotech company has two brilliant scientists working for it to create engineered creatures who can produce lifesaving breakthrough medicines for it. The company is on the raging edge, technology wise, but hanging on by its fingernails financially. The company isn't yet turning a profit and where it is in development, is in fact hemoraging cash. The investors expect a turnaround. Hewlett plays William Barlow, the representative suit whose job it is to represent the corporate voice EXPECTING RESULTS. And when Clive Nicoli (Brody) and Elsa Cast (Sarah Polley) screw it up with their first critter, this put their side project in a starker light.
The side project would be Dren, a lab grown hybrid of many fathers, including human DNA. This puts the film right on the cutting, controversial edge of where biotech is nowadays. The film could have been a cutting commentary on it. But they kind of lost it when they wandered into the nature/nurture argument about what makes a man/woman. Again, a more deft script could have handled it and turned in a more interesting, though provoking story. But they decided not to go that route, making Brody's character ultimately a weak person pulled hither and yon by his weaker and more emotional drives.
Including porking his quasi-human daughter.
The film seemed pulled and pushed different ways for "effects", without the narrative undergirding to go along with it as a full fledged story about human scientists out on the frontier.
Not so obvious on the first run through. Glaringly so on the second.
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