There was a time, long ago, when horror movies were more than just jump scares and loud noises. More than a lot of other genres, horror has allowed filmmakers to address social issues in unique and exciting ways. By taking current political issues and combining them with monsters and thrills, a director could smuggle his message out to audiences without them explicitly knowing it. Everything from race relations (Night of the Living Dead), to religion (The Exorcist), to Communism (Invasion of the Body Snatchers), anything was fair game for the horror genre. Sadly, that seems to have faded since the 90's. Now we are inundated with torture porn and hollow remakes that miss the point of the originals. But once every so often a film will sneak through in the same vain as classic horror cinema. Such is the case with Splice, a film with a lot on its mind, even if it's never quite sure what to do with all that creativity.Taking a page straight from Cronenberg, Splice is pure body horror. What would happen if someone combined the genes of a human with those of other animals? Such is the question two award winning scientists ask (Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley), resulting in the creation of Dren. Dren is human-like in appearance, but animalistic in nature. Instead of aborting the creature when they realize how dangerous it is, they adopt it as a surrogate child, trying to help it tap into its human side. Much of the fun to be had comes from the tension between Dren's opposing sides. Dren seems to have human emotions, but also has a very violent side, and you're never sure which side will win out in a given scenario. Armed with a poisonous stinger in its tail, Dren can wreak bloody havoc when it wants to.
Brody and Polley play the parts of surrogate parents perfectly, with Polley especially standing out. Polley is so protective of Dren, she seems willing to sacrifice everything she has for Dren. There is an obsessive, almost deranged quality to the character, and you can see why she would latch on to Dren so strongly. The movie has a lot of fun playing with the idea of these three characters being a deformed family of sorts. All the problems they have with Dren are like perverted inversions of the kinds of things a normal family would deal with when raising a child. The film can often be as funny and silly as it can be scary. Indeed, it's often much more of a dark comedy than a horror film at times. This is a wise choice, as playing this deadly serious would not work at all. The tone can still have some issues, but it mostly works, often because the actors understand what kind of movie they are in.
Because the film doesn't simply go for cheap thrills, but actually allows its audience to think and consider what is happening, Splice works. Stem cell research is still a complicated and divisive topic, and Splice has some interesting things to say on both sides of the argument. On the one hand, using human genes to create Dren results in some serious medical breakthroughs. On the other hand, it causes far more damage than it may be worth to those who create Dren. If the film does have a problem, it is the ending. For the majority of the run time, the film is content to be a character piece with grotesque visual moments and dark humor. But the end suddenly changes tone completely, turning into something other than what the film was before. The end feels cheap and unearned, and more than that, unnecessary. We spend so much time getting to know and understand Dren, that when something changes in Dren, it undermines what time we spent with the creature. It feels like the filmmakers couldn't figure out how to end the film they'd started, so they switched gears and took the easy way out. Too bad, as an ending in a similar tone with the rest of the film would have been much more satisfying.
Why is it so hard for horror films to be about something more than just violence? Splice is able to have some great bodily horrors in addition to interesting characters and thematic arcs worth thinking about. While it won't likely appeal to those looking for simple thrills, it is definitely more engaging than any other horror film released so far this year. And at its center is Dren, certainly one of the more complex movie "monsters" of recent memory.
