Splice a great modern take on Frankenstein tale

Who doesn't love a movie about mad scientists and their experiments run amok?

Splice is just such a movie but it doesn’t get bogged down in goofball histrionics, maniacal laughing and feverish screams of “It’s alive! Alive!”

Well, not much anyway.

This is the story of Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley), two top scientists at the Nucleic Exchange Research and Development (NERD) facility. Their superiors shut down their multi-species genetic testing in favour of focusing on marketing what might be a miraculous medicine for people with all sorts of diseases. God bless the renegade geniuses because they take it upon themselves to continue on with their work despite all obstacles, such as morals. The next step — adding a little human DNA into the mix.

The result is Dren (Delphine Chanéac), a mutant hybrid with the body of a woman, wide eyes, a long tail and rear-bending leg articulations. Already a special little child in the truest sense of the word, she learns well from her parents how to make up her own rules as she goes along.

This results in a prolonged sense of foreboding terror, some of the best I've seen in years but it comes coupled with some occasionally hokey and amateurish acting even from dramatic wunderkinds like Polley and Oscar-winning Brody. Make no mistake, this is a Frankenstein tale for the 21st century with Dren, the beautiful monster that grows too fast and understands too little how her awesome genetic power can so easily destroy what's around her. What is most effective is how the tension is gradually built up as the beast matures and evolves, morphing into something beautiful, chimerical and fantastic but with much ugliness lying beneath her surface.

Kudos to co-writer and director Vincenzo Natali for bringing forth such a great sci-fi horror. Born in the United States, he should be considered an honorary Canadian for his pioneering role in that genre in this country. Natali is probably best known for the technologically sophisticated and claustrophobic futuristic psychological prison drama Cube from 1997. On this film, he brought along Edmonton product Todd Cherniawsky as production designer to effectively create that modern Promethean setting, going from the cold, clinical lab to the rustic and wild barn that features so prominently in the second half. This tells the viewer that even things born with care and control can still easily end up in the wild where nature rules red in tooth, claw and stinger. There isn't much gore but a large part of the brilliance here is how you expect more and the little bit you do get dwells and festers in your mind.

Does this make Natali the next David Cronenberg? No, but he sure seems to be trying hard to achieve that. There's a healthy dose of the same kind of visceral visuals and sexual subtexts that the Baron of Blood has made fabulous use of. Regardless, Splice was one of the most poetic horrors that I've ever seen and it will likely end up as an under-rated and little-seen cult classic.