Splice
Elsa Kast and Clive Nicoli are two succesful young scientists that are experimenting with splicing genes of several animal types and putting them together again to create new species. As such, they’ve managed to create Fred & Ginger, two new creatures that look like overgrown slugs but have a protein that holds potential for curing a whole slew of diseases.
After their creation, the pharmaceutical company NERD where Kast and Nicoli work decides to shut down the splicing program and instead focus on searching a way they can mass-produce the protein.
The two react quite disappointed and Elsa wants to continue the research with human DNA, just to see whether it would be possible to create a human hybrid. Secretely they continue, but things go a bit faster than expected and little later DREN exists, a new hybrid form of life.
Although the idea was only to see whether they could do the impossible, the two get attached to DREN and decide to not kill the new creature. But as time progresses, their attachments grows so big that they don’t see the danger that’s lurking around the corner…
Sound and Vision:
The image comes with a blue-ish cold color palette that nicely gives the movie a sci-fi feeling. The amount of detail is nice, and the contrast is good, but the transfer isn’t perfect. There’s too much obvious banding present that gets visible each time black gradients fade to gray or when flashlights go around a room.
The soundtrack does an excellent job with clear voices while the sound effects create a vivid ambience. Dren’s movement is a great example of how well directionality is done and how widespread the sound field is. The sound also has an almost constant use of the subwoofer which really comes to life whenever necessary.
Extras:
– A Director’s Playground
– Behind the Scenes
Conclusion:
Splice is marketed originally by Warner as a creature horror movie and most of the footage from the trailers shows scare-moments that are supposed to lure people to the theatres. However, it’s more than that.
The movie goes deeper into the morels and is more about the question of how far one can go for science. What is possible and what is the right thing to do? The first two acts nicely display this with these questions popping up regularly and the bond between the scientists and Dren growing as she gets older and gets a more human look.
Unfortunately, the third act of the movie goes back to the more standard creature flick with action taking the lead and depth getting lost in favor of scare-moments and superficial action. Still, all in all Splice is a decent movie that’s definitely worth checking out!
7.0