Splice (2009 Movie) - Essay Example

Splice Review The movie Splice is a wild, bizarre depiction of science gone awry. Personally, the genre science fiction holds littleinterest to me, but the horror of specific sequences that occur in the film were enough to hold my attention until the end. First, once the film ended, I felt very odd. I could go far as to say mindfully violated by the limit in which the filmmakers took it, i.e. the intimate scene between Dren and Clive then later the raping of Elsa. The horror does not necessarily lie in the fact that Dren is a terrifying monster, but that the human scientists continue to push boundaries in every sense of the word.

As an audience member, I could hardly withstand the moment that Elsa and Clive decide to ignore the funding corporation’s rules and splicing human DNA with animal DNA due to the fact that the action created a red flag. It is not a secret that the controversial discussion about scientists and their work in respect to moral issues has been brought up. In this case, the decision of the scientists to disobey the law and morality for personal gain (becoming the first scientists to leap ahead in DNA discovery) is predictably going to go wrong. Why? There is a lesson to be learned when humans mess with nature: nature messes back.

The act of playing God always ends badly in the fictional world. Not only was the fact that their experiment got out of control predictable, the initial bonding between Clive and Elsa to Dren was as well. At first it was somewhat easy to relate to Elsa and Clive’s relationship with Dren. The beginning stages show Dren as a peaceful, delicate creature that is entirely innocent in nature. Who wants to destroy that? Even despite the scientists’ inability to think beyond their impulse of creating Dren.

The frustrating notion stems from Elsa and Clive’s lack of responsibility from the very get-go. This arises when Dren grows into a “woman” and her relationship changes with Elsa and Clive on individual levels. For instance, I found it uncomfortable and weird that Dren becomes attracted to Clive then revolution to the sex scene that follows suit. The tension between Elsa and Dren noticeably increases because Dren likes Clive, but also Elsa’s discipline is confusing. Wasn’t Dren this creature that she loved?

She takes on a kind of impatient, frustrated persona like a mom might with a bad child. However, Dren is not a child, which what made the movie interesting. Clive and Elsa treat her as such, but they forget that Dren is truly just a wild animal with human features. The way she moves, speaks and learns is alien-like. This is what made the movie unnerving. It felt like at any moment their luck would run out and a bomb would explode (which, of course, it did). The most confusing, yet satisfactory moment in the movie is when the “lifeless” body of Dren is buried then reborn as a male.

It was as if Frankenstein’s monster had revealed itself as just that: a monster. How it happened is unclear, but the reason for it could be to prove how much the scientists’ were in over their heads from the very start. Again, don’t mess with nature. The next defining moment, which is somewhat corny, occurs when “Dren” rapes Elsa. A small pause on her part to destroy it ends up disastrous as the male version of Dren kills Clive. Even after all they’ve been through, the scientist chooses the abomination over human life as a means to gain fame and fortune.

This continuing theme of scientists playing God and failing at it was well done in this movie, yet it seems to be growing tiresome and predicable overall. Works Cited Natali, Vincenzo, dir. Splice. Writ. Vincenzo Natali, Antoinette Terry, and Doug Taylor. 2009. 2010. DVD-ROM.