Splice

Sometimes me and Chris like to throw caution to the wind, gamble a bit. I know that may come as a surprise to some of you, me gambling. It was a decision which would impact our lives for the foreseeable future assuming our foreseeable future was only 2 hours. Splice or Get Him to the Greek. Neither of us had heard much about these movies so we ended up chosing the former. Now I gotta say at the heart of it, I love movies like Splice. Not the actual movie itself as it was utterly dreadful but movies like this give me more fodder than I could possibly ever ask for from the Christ god.

The movie starts out introducing us to Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, hipsters who drive a Gremlin (yes, a goddamned Gremlin of all things), listen to hipster music and fusion Jazz, and have a non-descript anime poster over their bed. Insert facepalm here. They also feel the need to wear jeans and t-shirts when meeting the person responsible for the bulk of their funding because they’re quirky and that’s just how they roll. Let me tell you, nothing impresses your boss like a good t-shirt. And let’s face it, if the story and these characters aren’t intriguing to us all we’re left with is Brody’s huge beak. Note to self: Adrien Brody in a monster movie where his nose takes on a mind of its own. Box office gold. Anyway, they apparently own their own lab called N.E.R.D., hardy har har, where our two love birds have just created the perfect killing machine capable of destroying life as we know it. Or, in a much more accurate description, two slugs that look distinctly like penises, penises with centipede legs. That’s right, combine the DNA of several distinct animals and you get a huge cock. I’m sure the feminists will have a field day with that one. Things go from good to questionable when our beloved couple decides to add human DNA to their primordial soup of wonder and whimsy which we all know has never comes back to bite anyone in the ass ever in the history of the world. Their thinly veiled excuse for this? SCIENCE! Which I wouldn’t mind if they didn’t drop this premise less than half way through the movie.

Flash forward 5 minutes and the fake vagina pops out something that looks like Elum from Oddworld Abe’s Odyssey. If you get that reference, see me for your well earned high five. Mr. Brody (quite intelligently, I may add) wants to destroy their newly minted kick to Mother Nature’s whisker biscuit. Ms. Polley feels all concerned would best be served by teaching the thing that should not be Scrabble. Side note: Brody ends up gassing the creature in the lab which I find a little ironic since he played a Jew in the Pianist trying to escape a similar fate. For convenience sake, the stick to the eye of god is basically Robin Williams from Jack and ages at an exponential rate however is not nearly as hairy.

What name do these two modern day Prometheuses give their abomination to the balance of nature? Something with biblical connotations like Eve? Maybe a clever play on a major scientific mind like Darwinia? That’s a big fat nope. Let’s go with Dren otherwise known as nerd backwards. Hardy har har again. At least they named her because I was running out of humorous non names to give her.

Dren keeps growing so its time for mommy and daddy go all Joseph Fritzl on her and put her in the basement. Then there’s the stock holder’s meeting where the two penis slugs are unveiled to the public. All is going well until they decide to have a cock fight, and much like a Gallagher show, the first five rows get drenched. After a fight between Adrien and Sarah regarding SCIENCE! and the general lack thereof of following any semblance of protocol or the scientific method or experimental controls, he decides to give Dren the old Andrea Yates treatment and put a distinct end to this foray into the unknown. Alas, she is capable of breathing underwater. Sure, why not. Now its time for Dren’s teenage years living in a barn. No I didn’t mistype; they move her into a barn.

Time for a brief description of what Dren now looks like. 4 fingers and toes like the Simpsons. Legs of a goat. A scorpion-esque tail. Sinead O’Connor haircut. B cup boobs. The ability to produce skin flaps for gliding. She is all that is woman.

If memory serves me right its now time for the big M. Night Shaymalan “What a tweeest” moment. The human DNA is (cue old time soap opera organ music) Sarah Polley’s. Dun Dun Daaaa. At this point SCIENCE! has not only been severely beaten, set on fire, stomped out, and been declared legally dead, its also been pissed upon. Go Splice. After finding out this little tidbit about Dren, Mr. Brody feels the best course of action is to have…sex…with…her. That’s right, he gives the old in out to a scorpion goat fish bald chick monster. I can only assume it was in the pursuit of SCIENCE! Hmm, wonder what she was doing with that tail? Then Sarah has to go and cock block him mid coitus. Cue a trip back to their hipster apartment and a rather superficial debate on ethics and morality so this movie can be about more than just growing your own sex toys. I’m about 73% sure this movie is just part of a viral marketing campaign for some new sex toy coming out in the near future. Just you wait and see.

Third act time and thank god it’s almost over. Back at the farm Dren seems to be catching an unexpected case of death. After she dies they decide to burn her belongings and bury the body. Most intelligent people would have burned the body but then we wouldn’t have the rest of the movie be a total cliché. Two pieces of Dren Scooby snacks show up and are quickly dispatched. We’re supposed to care about the one because its Brody’s brother and the whopping 3 scenes he’s in really make you care about him. Time for another “What a tweeest” moment. Dren is now a dude. Of course, it all makes sense now. Time for some good old fashioned Blair Witch Project woods chasin’. Brody decides to go for a swim in a pond where Dren happens to be. Its winter and how he doesn’t just go into shock and never wake up is beyond me. Perhaps there’s some sort of heating element in that schnoz. Much like a priest at an altar boy convention, Dren needs to dip his wick so he proceeds to rape Sarah. Hold onto this, I’ll come back in a minute. Adrien saves her by shoving a sharp stick in Dren, for the second time in the movie. HEYOOO. Dren rebuts with a little light tail stabbing to him and Ms. Polley crushes his head with a rock. The final scene involves Sarah Polley talking with the massively wealthy lady boss from the beginning and it ends with us seeing that she has become pregnant. So just a quick little recap. Sarah puts her DNA into experiment, experiment has sex with her, and now she’s pregnant. She literally fucked herself and got pregnant. I really need to resurrect Freud, have him watch this movie, and watch as his head explodes trying to figure out how screwed up that kids going to be.

I wasn’t expecting anything from this movie so the bar was set pretty low. It still couldn’t clear it. My feelings can best be put this way. It feels as though all involved were at a shooting range and in a tight cluster of targets that read pure gore, morality and ethics, nature vs. nurture, and Frankenstein, these people managed to shoot the arrow in between all of them and miss the mark. A couple of tweeks and a redone third act and this could have been a really fantastic movie.