Weekly Film Wreck: Splice

Splice got a lot of notice at the end of the year for being "underrated." The amazing Edgar Wright said so himself. And of course, Harry Knowles loved it from the outset (because he's the least discerning film critic I've ever read). Even though the trailer made it look pretty horrible (and it was produced by Dark Castle)...



... all of this positive buzz around it made me a little excited.

I'll never doubt my first instinct again (I will).

The major problem with Splice is that there isn't a single likable, rational character in the entire film. Elsa (Sarah Polley) doesn't do one thing the entire film that makes any sense, as evidenced in the trailer. Imagine the "I'm going to take my mask off even though you said you were going to gas the room and already counted to three while trying to lure this creature that already attacked me while I'm defenseless" mentality for another hour and a half or so and you've got Splice. I understand she's a curious scientist, but that doesn't mean she has to lose all perspective on reason (oh, but she's a mad scientist!). Clive (Adrien Brody) is supposed to be the reasonable one, but he's so unlikable that we don't care what he has to say or what happens to him.

The film plays out largely as expected (I stated how the end would play out as soon as the creature was "born," though obviously not the events that brought us to that point) and most of the film is viewed in frustration that these characters aren't more interesting. At times, it's as if the writers Vincenzo Natali, Antoinette Terry Bryant, and Doug Taylor asked "what new feature can we give Dren (NERD, the name of the science lab [I'm not kidding] backwards) to make her more awesome?" I'll give Splice some credit though, it's not afraid to take you further into uncomfortable places than most mainstream films. But I think that's why people are willing to give Splice a break which is unfair to the rest of the horrible film.

Matt Singer at IFC.com has a piece detailing some of the various metaphors that may have made Splice "too smart for its own good." I really only want to focus on one, but if anyone missed the "Elsa and Clive are parents to the creature" aspect of the film, then they probably need to start from scratch with their cognitive skills.

I want to talk about Splice as a metaphor for independent filmmaking. While not necessarily wrong, Singer's ideas just come off at silly. That means any movie that features the act of creation can be a metaphor for filmmaking and any film that features the little guy fighting against higher powers can be about independent filmmakers. In the following quote, Singer seems to be making the claim that Splice's ending is trying to make the same point as Adaptation's:

Monster movies like "Splice" are traditionally cautionary tales about the perils of science run amok. Applied to the idea that Clive and Elsa are artistically adventurous filmmakers, that implies a belief that too much experimentation in a movie can be dangerous. That seems like a strange point for a filmmaker to make, and yet the end of "Splice," in which Dren goes on a rather clichéd kill-spree in a foggy forest, essentially reinforces it. Though much of the movie boldly creates a creature that an audience can sympathize with and even, at times, root for against her human "parents," the film's decidedly formulaic ending reverts to a simpler, more mainstream style of filmmaking.

I'm not willing to give director Vincenzo Natali and his co-writers Antoinette Terry Bryant and Doug Taylor that much credit. They made a mess of a movie with a mess of an ending. If you find a metaphor for filmmaking in there, good for you. I'm glad you got something out of it. I just felt bad that I made my friends watch it with me.