A peer-reviewed electronic journal published by the Institute for Ethics and

Emerging Technologies

ISSN 1541-0099

21(2) – December 2010

Film review: Splice

Sky Marsen, Victoria University, New Zealand

sky_marsen@yahoo.com

Journal of Evolution and Technology - Vol. 21 Issue 2 – December 2010 - pgs 63-65
If confronted with a totally different being, would we try to understand how it differs from us, or how it
resembles us? To what extent is our desire to learn how biological life works motivated by personal or
social factors? What are the implications of seeing the elements of life as commodities? These are some
questions raised by Splice (dir. Vincenzo Natali 2010), an intriguing and well-crafted film concerned with
artificially produced hybrid life (a warning that this review contains “spoilers”).

The story is in many ways a family drama, cast against the background of genetic research and the
financial interests that such research carries for large pharmaceutical corporations. Clive Nicoli (Adrien
Brody) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley) are geneticists, researching new ways of using cell and DNA
technology to develop medical treatments for diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Besides
being research collaborators they are also a married couple, allowing for themes of sexuality and
procreation to be crafted into the narrative. In their ambitious attempts to create a new animal hybrid
gene, they break protocol and add some human DNA into their gene-mix. The experiment is surprisingly
successful and produces a live creature, a female hybrid, composed of human, animal, insect, fish, and
bird genes (played by Abigail Chu as a child and Delphine Chaneac as an adult – both performances
enhanced by computer generated graphics). This creature not only grows very rapidly, suggesting a short
life span, but also seems to have inherited top quality genes from her diverse ancestors, exhibiting
intelligence and capacity to learn. She can represent objects through drawing, but she does not master
language. However, she is able to recognize alphabet letters by association: in fact, the name she is
given, Dren, is an anagram of “nerd,” a word she spells with letter blocks, imitating the print on Elsa’s T-
shirt.

Anxious about the repercussions of their transgression, Elsa and Clive hide Dren in Elsa’s family farm, and
the central part of the film unfolds around the emotional reactions that Dren’s behavior triggers in the
couple. The living conditions resemble a nuclear family arrangement. The couple treat Dren half way
between a pet and a child, and like many pet owners (as well as many parents), they react affectionately
when their “pet” mimics them and acts in familiar ways, but are not so pleased when it defies their
expectations and acts unpredictably. Dren is not treated either as an experiment – objectively following a
transparent procedure – or as a fellow sentient being, empathically. Instead, she is used as a canvas that
reflects whatever human insecurities and prejudices are projected on it. The fact that Dren is a
completely unfamiliar being prevents her creators from behaving in their normal way, and brings out
their hidden fears and doubts, especially in the case of Elsa, who has a more troubled history. “You can’t
always get what you want,” Elsa tells Dren, which is an odd reprimand to give the world’s greatest
genetic discovery, and indicates that Elsa’s perception of reality is marred by her past.

Frank Herbert has said that the function of good science fiction is to question assumptions, and Splice
certainly fits the bill. In fact, the film focuses on the role of assumptions in our interactions with the
world, and shows how assumptions can mislead, often dangerously. Much of the conflict between Dren
and her creators lies in the latter’s fixed ideas about how things work – ideas that Dren repeatedly
challenges. For instance, the scientists initially believe that the creature will require specific nutritional
components, only to find that she actually has a sweet tooth. Later, when she has a choking attack they
think she is suffocating, but it turns out that she has amphibian lungs and needs water. Later still, when
she seemingly lies dying, they sit by her bedside and grieve, but soon discover that she is a sequential
hermaphrodite and is actually changing sex.

Interestingly, at no time do the two scientists attempt to understand how Dren thinks and how she
experiences the world on her own terms. From a narrative perspective, this is achieved by consistently
presenting events from Clive’s or Elsa’s point of view. Although Dren is neither animal nor human, she is
seen alternatively as one or the other by the two scientists, and we follow their cue. For example, her
face shows what could be taken to be basic human emotions, such as happiness, sadness, fear and
surprise, but this is an inference – we never know how Dren really feels; we only know what feelings we
attribute to her. The film does not attempt to speculate on Dren’s psychology, and this is appropriate
because any such speculation would diverge from the film’s main aim, which is to explore the responses
of two humans who are thrust into an intimate relationship with an alien creature. Significantly, when
the male Dren utters his first phrase, he is soon after dispatched and the film ends. This is a strategic
move, because exploring Dren as a linguistic being would entail changing the angle and concerns of the
narrative, and going into areas that lie beyond its scope.

The film creatively blends themes that trace their origin to prototypical science fiction stories. For
example, the theme “scientist creates being that he cannot handle” is familiar from Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein (1818), and the theme “intelligent people carry emotional baggage that prevents them
from achieving great things” is almost a staple of the popular imagination, with variations ranging from
Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris (1961) to Michael Crichton’s Sphere (1987). Splice, however, makes some
interesting improvisations to these themes, which highlight its originality and relevance to current times.
In addition to its provocative exploration of interpersonal and human-alien relationships, the film
underlines the practicality and competitiveness of much medical research. “What’s the point if you can’t
publish?” says Clive at the beginning of the film, when considering the option of doing research just for
the sake of learning. Then at the end of the film, the director of the pharmaceutical company exclaims,
“We’ll be filing patents for years,” referring to Dren’s genetic material. Thus the narrative is framed by
socio-economic factors, which drive many of the characters’ actions throughout the story. It aptly
reminds us that idealistic concerns are anchored in social realities.

Vincenzo Natali has directed other films that deal with the interpersonal dimensions of philosophical
issues. In the existentialist Cube (1997) the characters are trapped in a maze whose purpose and
structure they do not understand, and while using logic and mathematics to escape they also have to
deal with their own obsessions and irrationalities. In Cypher (2002), the protagonist attempts to define
himself solely through his actions, bypassing memory. Furthermore, Splice was produced by Guillermo
Del Toro, the director of Blade II (2002) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), who is known for his predilection for
narratives that pit themes of personal trauma against impersonal, socio-historical forces. The film’s
status as an independent, low-budget production works in its favor, shielding the director from the
temptation to comply with science-fictional cinematic clichés, such as elaborate, high-tech special effects
and over-populated, prop-loaded action scenes. Instead, the film’s value rests on the ideas that underpin
its narrative and on the symbolism of its images, especially the image of Dren.
Dren is an “Animal Plus” (to adapt the transhumanist term “Human Plus”). She is also a mythical
construct, and every part of her constitution has symbolic value. Her facial characteristics are mainly
humanoid, which allows for expression, and invites the viewer to identify with her and attempt to
understand her emotions. Although she is a biped, she has the hind legs of a quadruped, evoking the
numerous human-animal hybrids that exist in world mythology, such as centaurs, fauns and adlet. She
also has the symbol of animality par excellence, a tail, which is equipped with an additional marker of
non-human power – a poisonous sting. Finally her wings, besides giving her ornamental and aesthetic
appeal, signal the archetypal image of the angel.

Dren’s characteristics evoke both vulnerability and danger, and lead her creators (and, by extension, us,
since we see from their point of view) to interpret her behavior in terms of these traits. Inherently,
however, she remains a mystery, a manifestation of life that cannot attain an identity since she is the
only one of her kind. In a daring narrative move, Dren also changes sex – as indeed happens with some
marine life, such as mollusks and crustaceans (Kazancıoğlu and Alonzo 2009). This makes any attempt to
prescribe her identity in human or social terms even more elusive, since gender is a defining element of
the human, from both biological and social perspectives.

Natali was working on the idea of Splice for ten years, which gave him ample time to ponder the
important scientific developments in genetic research that have taken place since the late 1990s. In
many ways, the film was released at an appropriate time, soon after the decoding of the human genome
and progress in self replicating cells, developments which are re-defining the distinction between the
physical constitution of an individual and the biology of a species (see, for example, Gerstein et al 2007).
Splice speculates on these scientific developments by staging them in a socio-familial context. A core
message of the film is that our understanding of biological life may well be motivated by a sincere desire
to learn something new, but it is also inevitably filtered through our experience of society and our own
personal past.
References

Crichton, M. 1987. Sphere. New York: Random House.

Gerstein, M.B. et al. 2007. What is a gene post-ENCODE? History and updated definition. Genome
Research 17:. 669-81. Available at

http://www.genome.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gr.6339607

Kazancıoğlu, E. and Alonzo, S. H. 2009. Costs of changing sex do not explain why sequential
hermaphroditism is rare. American Naturalist 173, no. 3 (March):,327-36.

Lem, S. 1970. Solaris. Trans. J. Kilmartin and Steve Cox. New York: Faber and Faber. First published 1961.

Shelley, M. 1985. Frankenstein. London: Penguin. First published 1818.

Film School Rejects

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Brian Salisbury June 3, 2010

Review: Splice

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Science Fiction is not my preferred genre. Automatically a few doubts about this review and my ability to
deliver unbiased analysis should be crawling around in your brain. It’s not that I don’t care for the genre
or have anything against it, it’s just that it was never something I routinely exposed myself to as a young
film geek. Some would probably suppose that my lacking in avid fandom for the genre would result in my
expectations being decidedly lower than those of a die-hard Sci-Fi geek, on the contrary. I don’t walk into
a movie like Splice with a few marked expectations. I demand some sort of concrete idea buried within
the futuristic society or the advanced science that is metaphorically explored or I expect it to pull double
duty as a good horror film. I think Splice does both remarkably well. In fact, it’s one of the better Sci-Fi
films I have seen in quite some time.

Splice is the story of two scientists, who are also involved with one another, hard at work trying to crack
all manner of genetic codes. They are fusing the genetic material of various types of life in order to
create an entirely new organism that can then produce valuable proteins used to fight diseases. The
smitten biologists are confident that their work is on the right track until tragedy strikes at a convention
and their parent company threatens to pull the plug. In desperation, they decide to cross the ethical
point of no return and add human DNA to the mix. The result of their experiment is Dren, an
amalgamation of several animals but predominantly exhibiting distinctly human features. Their
excitement turns to horror when Dren displays erratic, violent behavior. Have they made the
breakthrough of the century or a terrible, irreversible mistake?

I liked Splice a lot, and I feel I’m right on the cusp of loving it. For me, Splice represents exactly what
Science-Fiction is supposed to be. There is a stigma, and perhaps at one point I held this same belief, that
Sci-Fi is a juvenile, plastic genre that produces little more than spectacular effects and mindless fantasy.
But great Sci-Fi takes a very tangible societal issue or question and uses technology to emphasize the
universality and timelessness of those issues. The interesting thing about Splice is that it is less
interested in examining the obvious moral quandary of cloning as it is the question of abortion. At the
beginning of the film, our protagonists Clive (Adrien Brody) & Elsa (Sarah Polley) discuss the possibility of
having a child and while he is strongly for the idea, she is staunchly opposed. The argument appears to
placed on the back burner in the wake of Dren’s arrival, but if you listen closely to their conversations
about what to do about Dren and how to handle the situation, they are echoing the conversations of a
young couple struggling with the abortion decision; their actions and the shift in their relationship are
also indicative of such a decision.

Beyond the meatier social commentary of the film, I really enjoyed that it once again blurred the division
between Sci-Fi and horror; done so often at this point that notating the demarcation seems
inappropriate. When Dren doesn’t get what she wants, the results are terrifying thanks in large part to
her inhuman strength. What made her character so interesting to me is how her emotional states
directly influenced the discovery of each of her hidden attributes. The reason I enjoyed this so much is
that it flies in the face of the idea that science is a purely stoic endeavor and emphasizes how
emotionally complex the pursuit of discovery can be. The horror really builds in the finale into a full-
blown monster film which is fantastic.

Splice Movie

Vincenzo Natali amps the entertainment value with some spectacular special effects integration and
superior gross-out moments. The scene at the convention wherein the demonstration turns ugly is one
of the most satisfying gore sequences in any film ever. The two organisms, in which the two researchers
had invested so much time and energy, suddenly turn on one another and transform the aquarium in
which they are housed into a bucket of blood; the cherry being when it dumps on the first few rows like
a macabre Gallagher concert.

As to the special effects, I love the design of Dren. Though her human characteristics become most
prominent in her design, the added touches of separate animal traits are very cool. But more than Dren’s
design, I love the approach to bringing that character to life. Instead of simply going full CG, Natali
decided to use computer graphics as a tool for augmenting the practical makeup work. The result is an
otherworldly type creature who is also fully expressive and who can easily interact with her costars but
also undergo unbelievable changes. I love that Dren’s design and the extent of her abilities keeps getting
pushed further and further to illustrate the mistake these two have made.

I can definitely see where people are not going to like this film and I can’t blame them one iota. There
are some actor choices that are a bit weak and end up doing more harm than good to the film’s
cohesiveness. For example, Sarah Polley gets progressively more hostile toward Dren as the film
progresses. While this is explained by her character’s backstory, it took me out of the world of the film a
couple of times because it was so extreme. I eventually weighed her intense bitchiness against her
motivations and saw that the ideas were appropriate, but I think Polley overstates the point in her
performance. Beyond that, I found the acting to be more than solid and the back-and-forth relationship
between these two certifiable nerds was incredibly charming.
But overall, Splice is fantastic. It delivered everything I could have asked from a Sci-Fi flick and was never
boring; a fear that had been festering in me since I watched the initial trailer. The last shot of the film,
though admittedly very predictable, nevertheless succeeds in putting the metaphorical bow on top. I
think this will be the film that serves as a gateway for those unfamiliar with Natali’s work to go back and
revisit his cannon. My only hope is that it scares up enough buzz to keep him making smaller genre films
that pack this kind of punch.

The Upside: Brilliant, poignant, scary Sci-Fi flick that fires on all cylinders.

The Downside: Some questionable acting choices may turn some off to the characters.

On the Side: Splice made its world premiere at Sitges in October 2009, then played at the 2010 Sundance
Film Festival.

Click below to watch the Splice trailer:

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Brian Salisbury(Social Media Editor)

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Longtime FSR columnist, current host of FSR’s Junkfood Cinema podcast. President of the Austin Film
Critics Association.

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