In the gloopiness of the special effects, with its sense of oozing corruption and sticky sensuality, it resembles the first two Alien movies and David Cronenberg's icky remake of The Fly. Its horrific elements won't endear it to the squeamish. Splice is one of the first, and best, films to explore these issues. Over the coming decades, advances in genetic engineering are going to pose many tricky questions of morality. It tries to please downmarket horror fans with a climactic chase and a twist we have seen too many times before.īut most of Splice is fresh and imaginative. Towards the end, Dren becomes a creature not unlike the monster played by Natasha Henstridge in Species (1995) and Species II (1998), and Splice deteriorates into cliche. Played by the supple French actress Delphine Chaneac with help from the special effects department, she becomes an intriguing mixture of dangerous and sexy.Īs she reaches rebellious adolescence, she becomes more and more seductive, but with a serpent's tongue and an all too literal sting in her tail. Dren develops further characteristics, some angelic, some less so. When Dren becomes too big to be hidden in their laboratory, they transport her to an isolated farmhouse Elsa has inherited. Dren starts to communicate her needs through Scrabble tiles. Elsa bonds with the creation and dresses it - her - in a little blue dress.Įlsa calls her Dren, which is Nerd backwards. It develops with frightening speed into something humanoid.Ĭlive panics and tries to drown it, with unexpected results. Their creation starts out as a mixture between a plucked chicken and the thing that burst out of John Hurt's chest in Alien. 'What's the worst that could happen?' asks Elsa brightly. Out of curiosity, they decide to introduce human DNA into their experiments, even though their amoral, profit-driven bosses forbid it.
She was abused by her mother during childhood, and fears her own maternal instincts aren't strong enough. Outside the lab, Clive and Elsa are a couple, too. It's comically reminiscent of parents who can't see that their newborn offspring bear a strong resemblance to Mussolini or John Prescott.