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Friday, September 3, 2010

Movie Review - Splice (2009)


I just finished watching a wild one here, “Splice” (2009). This movie had it all; funny, sad, amazing, intelligent and sexy. The film involves two scientists Clive (Adrian Broody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) who is into biochemistry and gene splicing. After knowing that their program will be shut down they conceive the idea to create some sort of hybrid creature human mix. The intention was see if they could even do it but they soon grew attached and saw the experiment through to the end.

There are definitely movies out there with virtually the same premise of ‘playing god’ but this one seemed unique to me. I wanted to watch. Not because I thought it was a train wreck but because it was thought provoking. I mean -the implications of creating life and splicing genes is mind blowing. Are we ready to cross the ethical boundaries? I am sure we are only mere steps away from engineering the perfect being. I can only imagine that there is already testing like this behind closed doors, but we don’t hear about it because it is so controversial.

I mentioned sexy earlier; seduction and transformation are explored with this creature. It was very shocking and disturbing to say the least, I thought I was watching a movie directed by David Cronenburg as he usually entertains with themes of this nature. I say hats off to the actual director Vincenzo Natali.

The pace of the film was perfect, didn’t feel too long or too short and kept my attention. The creature effects were amazing and the actress playing it did a wonderful job capturing the essence of her character in each phase of life; from a child with wonderment to a confident young woman and later an aggressive man. She was the real star with having no dialogue she had to rely on face expressions alone.

Sarah Polley performed well, she’s a decent actress. She held everything together as she always does. Meanwhile, Adrian Broody was not, his performance was mediocre in fact I question why he chose to do such a role.

There is a lot more to this movie after you scratch the surface and I could easily go on about it, but you will just have to see it. I will agree it was lacking ‘something’ (can’t place finger) that would have made it fantastic. Sadly this will be a movie that will fall through the cracks even in DVD sales. It wasn’t perfect by any means but it was a fun ride. I rate this film 7/10.

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