Splice - dir. by Vincenzo Natali (2009)

It's somewhat hard to believe a studio executive saw the film Splice (2009) and thought it would make a good wide-release film, a possible summer-alternative money-maker. Don't get me wrong--the movie is good; damn good. It's just . . . well, a weird sci-fi horror movie, featuring adults in all major roles, that doesn't have a necessarily happy ending, and generally doesn't have much of anything that you'd normally think would appeal to a major studio.

So, thank you to Warner Bros for distributing this crazy film, and more importantly, Joel Silver and Dark Castle Productions, for picking it up after its festival premier last year. Dark Castle has had a weird history, starting their company off with the releases of House On Haunted Hill (1999) and Thirteen Ghosts (2001), both decent remakes of William Castle films. After that, it gets a little sketchy, with nonsense like Ghost Ship (2002), Ninja Assassin (2009), with some good ones (last year's The Orphan was quite good and went basically unnoticed) here and there.

Splice is like nothing I've seen from the company yet (I can't comment on it in relation to the rest of director Vincenzo Natali's ouvre, as I have not yet seen any of his previous films), combining realistic (seeming) science fiction with some worthwhile questions of morality--and how's this? Zero fake scares or jumps. When's the last time you went to see a horror film and there wasn't a single moment wherein someone is startled by a cat, their friend, an ice machine turning on, etc; or there weren't at least seven or eight soundtrack shrieks, in order to get a cheap jump from the audience?

As much as I liked this year's The Wolfman, the first half contained more silly soundtrack jumps than anything I've ever seen. It's nice when you know the author of your horror entertainment is aware of the difference between a genuinely scary moment and a gimmick used to cause someone to jump in their seat.

I think bypassing that kinda thing, which doesn't always hurt a movie but can sometimes be fairly annoying, Splice actually creates a pretty believable atmosphere. It isn't jokey sci-fi, but it isn't confusing hard sci-fi, and it doesn't get hung up on overexplaining anything, which is kind of a feat considering the gene-splicing subject matter.

And overexplaining is also something critics should be wary of when reviewing a film of this type. And by that I mean one that contains seriously strange plot developments in the second half, developments that aren't even hinted at in the trailer.

It really isn't fair to say much more about the film's plot than what you see in that two-minute preview. Two scientists, romantically involved, do some off-the-record research on gene splicing and end up creating a creature that is part human, part animal, and growing quickly.
I've seen some comments online from folks who got a Species (1996) vibe from the trailer. It's not Species, though; it's nothing like that fun, if silly, action-sci-fi-erotic-thriller mash-up. But it is very, very good, and probably not too similar to anything you've seen before.